La vengeance belge

Salut! Just a short, fun entry for now. My language prof gave us these jokes last week. The French love jokes about Belgians: stupid Belgians, dirty Belgians, whatever. Well, here's the Belgians' revenge, la vengeance belge. Some are better than others, and unfortunately jokes don't translate as well as I'd like.

A French guy uses a urinal, does he wash his hands before or after ?

--During

How does a French person commit suicide?

--He fires the gun 15 centimeters above his head, right in his superiority complex.

What do you call someone who speaks three languages?

--Trilingual

What do you call someone who speaks two languages?

--Bilingual

What do you call someone who only speaks one language?

--French

Why do the French love Belgian jokes?

--Because they make them laugh three times over: the first time when they hear one, the second time when you explain it to them, and the third time when they understand it.

Why do the French have smelly backs?

--From farting higher than their asses.

Why do you say “Go to the toilets” in France when in Belgium you say “Go to the toilet”?

--Because in France, you need a bunch of toilets before finding one clean one.

After creating France, God found that it was the most beautiful country in the world. It was going to cause some jealousy. So, to reestablish the balance, God created the French.

Why does a French person always drink from their cup when they swim?

--Because even in the water they need to open their big mouth.

You know how you save a French person from drowning?

--No, but all the better.

What’s the difference between Nelson Mandela and a member of the French government?

--Nelson Mandela was in prison before he was elected.

Alright, hope at least one of them got a chuckle. A bientôt!

Maggie B.

Coup de foudre à Firenze

Salut!

Okay, more of my wonderful week in Italy...unfortunately, my last full day in Rome I was sick. Coughing, achy, stuffed up, headache, the works. But it didn't (I hope) prevent Sofie, Klaudyna, and me from having a full day. We had another wonderful grasse matinée (lazy morning), including a lasagna lunch made for us by Birgitta, Sofie's mom. She apologized for what she insisted was the worst lasagna she'd ever made because she didn't have time to heat it at the lower temperature it required...it tasted pretty darn good to me. Our first stop in Rome was the Spanish steps, which were decked out with huge pots of beautiful azaleas. It made me think of the azaleas at home, which are probably in full bloom by now.

Next was the Pantheon. While its interior isn't as lavishly decorated as St. Peter's or some of the other churches I've seen this semester, the Pantheon is an architectural wonder. How did they build such a perfect dome, and on such a large scale, so long ago? The measurements are incredibly exact. Not only is the bottom rim of the dome a perfect circle with the hole at the top exactly centered, but the dome, if reflected downward into the building itself, would make a perfect sphere. And this sphere would just barely touch the floor at the exact center of the structure. How's that for precision?

We stopped for some gelato (when in Rome...) and then walked over to the Colosseum and Forum Romana again, to take a better look. It wasn't great weather, but at least it wasn't raining. Then, to finish up the day, we walked through the Villa Borghese to a place that Sofie promised had a great view of Rome at sunset. And she was absolutely right, it was incredible to see all the cupolas, spires, and ornate buildings in relief against an orangey pink sky. A perfect finale for a great three days in Rome.

I arrived in Florence by train the next day (Wednesday) and checked into my hostel. Not wanting to risk it with my cold, I rested most of the afternoon and really only ventured out into the city to find a very inexpensive, very good trattoria. By this point having lost my voice almost completely, I croaked out my selection for the prix fixe menu, choosing fettucine with pesto, chicken with a white veggie sauce, and a salad. It was excellent, and the tiramisu wasn't bad either. The highlight, though, had to be the pesto, since French pesto, pistou, just doesn't cut it in my opinion. How can you make a good pesto without pine nuts?

Anyway, the next day was full of walking, queueing, and gawking. My first priority was to see Michelangelo's David, housed in the Galleria dell'Accademia (I hope I spelled that right). The entrances to the Accademia and the Uffizi are surprisingly low key, at least I think so. It took me a good ten minutes wandering around near the Galleria dell'Accademia until I happened to spot the line in a small street off of a square. But it was of course worth the wait. I actually am glad pictures weren't allowed, because I would've been tempted to just take as many pictures as possible instead of taking my time to look at the statue. It was off on its own under skylight, so you could walk all the way around it. Every step I took, the expression on David's face changed and so did his body language. Also, it never occurred to me before that David's head is actually not proportional to his body, it's too big. It doesn't take away from the sculpture, it's just funny that one of the most famous pieces of sculpture is not one of the most technically perfect.

Wandering away from the museum, I made my way down to the Duomo. I love the colors, the pale pinks alternating with dark greens, and the painting on the inside of the cupola is one of the most beautiful ones I've seen, I think. It's not the sunniest subject, the progression from Hell to Heaven, but again the colors are striking and it's beautiful even from 30 feet below, kind of spiraling up away from you. The rest of the inside of the Duomo was simple, but still impressive because of the size.

Before committing to the wait in the line at the Uffizi, I walked over to St. Croce Church, where I had read there was a kind of specialty foods market. The church was similar in style to the Duomo with its pink and green stonework, but I was really there for the market. Having scoped out all the stalls, full of pastries, cheeses, olives, and alcoholic beverages of all kinds, I gave in to my sweet tooth, though as usual it took some convincing, and got a cannoli. Not the most conventional lunch food, I admit, but completely satisfying. Now I was ready to wait for almost two hours to get into the Uffizi.

I've said it before, early religious art usually doesn't interest me. Despite coming from a culture steeped in Judeochristian traditions I'm just not well enough versed in art history, Christian symbology, or the Bible itself to really appreciate that kind of art. There was a lot of 'that kind of art' in the Uffizi, but also a lot of Renaissance art, which I can understand better. My favorite piece is an obvious one, Boticelli's Allegory of Spring, but I liked Judith Slaying Holofernes by the female painter Artemisia Gentileschi as well. The more I travel around Europe the more I understand why Europeans are so hung up on the fact that the United States is a "young country". As I made my way to the most recent paintings in the Galleria del'Uffizi I made sure to see how many were completed after the founding of the United States. Not such a difficult task, since there were three.

After this busy, busy day I picked out a trattoria that was recommended by my trusty Let's Go volume and a couple travelers' forums and headed out, ready to eat. Apparently documentation of Florence's streets hasn't been as accurate or as thorough as I would have hoped. Twenty minutes after I had found the approximate location of Trattoria Anita according to Let's Go, Google Maps, and the person at the front desk of my hostel, I found an annoyingly straightforward little sign that pointed down a tiny street "Trattoria Anita". Still, another success on the food front. I would actually just prefer to eat the pasta and not even go on to the second course, which is usually a meat dish, maybe with a veggie on the side. It seems like the pasta is the main event, and all of the second courses I had were good but didn't really compare with the quality of the fresh pasta and their wonderful sauces. Me and my crazy American ideas...

Before leaving Florence the next afternoon, I explored the Ponte Vecchio and the Oltrarno neighborhood on the other side of the river from the main drag. The weather was beautiful and the Oltrarno was much more peaceful than the very tourist-y center. I found a tiny but wonderful sandwich place run by two brothers and frequented by locals. You have to be quick with your order, just say the number of the sandwich you want to one brother, order a drink from the other, and then enjoy your fare squatting on a curb beside the tiny, tiny storefront. It's kind of odd to see people standing in the street eating sandwiches and drinking from dainty wine glasses. But my prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich was awesome.

I was reluctant to leave Florence, and Bologna didn't really compare to either Rome or Florence for me, but it was a lazy end to a very full trip. Bologna is called the "Red City" because a lot of its buildings are in red brick and apparently it's known for its Communist inhabitants. I can't speak for the number of Communists I saw in Bologna (how does one spot a Communist?), but its buildings are a charming dusty red color. I spent some time in the main piazza and grabbed my last pasta lunch in Italy before taking an overnight bus into Marseille.

So, enfin, I'm back in France, the blog's updated, and I'm coming home in less than two weeks. I think I'll update next with some jokes about French people one of my professors gave us. A plus tard!
Maggie B.

La ville éternelle

Ciao!
I'm back in Aix now, but I know if I don't update about Italy now I'll just put it off, and who wants to update about Rome and Florence when you're in Bucks County? Just kidding, I'm looking forward to getting home in two weeks, but I'm so glad I first got to go to Italy for the second week of my spring break.

Saturday morning, I met my classmate Sofie at the Aix bus station to take the bus to the Marseille train station where we would take the train to Rome (very complicated). Sofie is Swedish but has been living in Rome since she was 2. While most of us in level 4F, our class at the institute, can claim a pretty high level of French, Sofie speaks Swedish, Italian, French, English, and Spanish, all with practically no accent. In Rome we met another classmate from our school, Klaudyna, who is a Swedish citizen but half-Polish and speaks Swedish, Polish, French, and English. Oh, to grow up in Europe...or have multicultural parents (sorry, Mom and Dad, but you've failed me in that respect).

Anyway, after meeting Klaudyna at the train station, the three of us took a bus to Frescati, a village on a hill outside of Rome where the young people go on weekend nights to hang out. Sofie told us that the typical fare for a Frescati dinner is something called porchetta, roasted pork seasoned with a mix of herbs, country bread, a chunk of cheese, some olives, and a few salami, to be eaten kind of picnic style. The porchetta was excellent, though I'm more of a salami fan myself, and it was late when Sofie's dad came to take us to their house in another nearby village.

We slept in the next day and had a big breakfast before taking the metro into Rome. We had slept in a little to long to get in for free at the Musei Vaticani, so we just went into Saint Peter's instead. It was incredible, not just the size but the detail put into all of it. One of the highlights for me was Michelangelo's pieta, something I've only ever seen pictures of in history and art textbooks. We walked through the tombs under the basilica and then, feeling ambitious, opted to climb the stairs up to the cupola of the basilica. Five hundred fifty steps later we were there, with an amazing view of Rome and the Vatican City, even though it was overcast.

After we'd had our fill of St. Peter's, Sofie took us on a whirlwind walking tour of Rome, passing who knows how many Roman monuments. We ended up near the Trevi Fountain, where we went to a restaurant Sofie knew for its huge variety of pasta. The pasta with vodka sauce I ordered (you know me, I like what I know), definitely lived up to the Italian reputation for pasta. After, we went back to the Trevi Fountain to see it lit up, then went to the gelato place Sofie thinks is the best in Rome. I could have tried a few other places to see if I agreed, but really why bother if a native has already done the scoping out for you? Before heading back to Sofie's, the three of us walked around some more, moving from piazza to piazza, each one filled with street artists and self-trained opera singers.

The next day, Monday, we slept in a little less, had a slightly lighter breakfast and headed to the Vatican Museums. While waiting in line, we overheard what seemed to be an interesting, English-language tour and asked if we could join. The guide, who turned out to be German but living in Italy and actually born in the United States, said we could tag along and he'd knock off the 10€ commission, making the price 15€. And it was definitely worth it. We saw beautiful tapestries, incredible ceilings, some of them were actually trompe l'oeil, but it was so hard to tell it was so well done. And, of course, the Sistine Chapel. It was impressive, but, as our guide explained, Michelangelo's one mistake was that he painted too many details which can't actually be seen from the floor. But it really was worth seeing, and even though the signs forbid it, we managed to sneak in a few pictures before the guards suddenly decided they were going to crack down on it (I get the impression that happens a lot in Italy, you can break a rule until the guy in charge decides you can't anymore).

Having spent several hours in the Vatican Museums, we took a bus over toward the Colosseum and the Forum Romana, though both were closed by the time we got there. It was still really cool, definitely not the kind of stuff you get to see in the United States. Sofie treated Klaudyna and me to her flawless Pavarotti impression outside the Colosseum, a police car even came around at the end and applauded. It was just a very surreal experience to have three girls goofing off with an ancient Roman monument as a backdrop. Anyway, we ducked into the Metro just before it started pouring and went back to Sofie's, where her parents, Birgitta and Mats, had prepared us a wonderful Italian meal, a pasta course and a meat course and everything. It was very nice, I kind of felt guilty they were making such a fuss over us. Birgitta even convinced me to stay in Rome an extra night and helped me arrange my new plans with the hostel where I was staying in Florence.

Well, I actually have to finish some homework that I've put off for a class I have in a couple hours. I'll tell about the rest of my adventures in Italia next time.
A bientôt!
Maggie B.

Missy, Maman, et Marie-Do

I promised to write a bit about Missy and my mom's stay in Aix after we came down from Paris. Well, again we had rented an apartment, and it was perfectly situated. I don't think my mom and Missy really believed me when I told them how small Aix is, but they soon found out since the farthest we walked was ten minutes to the bus station.

Compared to Paris, Aix is a lightweight when it comes to attractions and museums. So mostly I was on restaurant duty, and we found some excellent restaurants. I'm glad Aix didn't disappoint my guests on the food front. I showed Missy and my mom around town a bit, the markets and the squares and the fountains. Also, my host mom, Marie-Do, invited them over for panisses and wine the first night we got in. Panisses are these little greasy biscuit things made from chick pea flour, and they're a specialty of Marseille. Well, it was an amusing meeting. I was in translation mode, and I was kind of anxious about Marie-Do's reaction to our American openness. I was in charge of somehow describing all three women's dating histories, opinions on men and celebrities, and theories about my own lovelife. But it was a fun little get together.

The apartment in Aix was perfect, very charming and decorated in the Provencal style. Couldn't have asked for a better trip, really. I did get bitten by bedbugs in the foldout couch, I think, but they're almost gone now.

Okay, next post about Rome. Ciao,
Maggie B.