Une semaine en France, pt. II: Hallo! Ik ben Rachel, en ik ben gek.

Or: the wedding!

One of the things I was asked a lot over the weekend and few days following is whether French weddings are different from American weddings. I generally answer that they’re pretty similar, but it would actually be more correct to say I’m not really sure, since I haven’t been to a wedding since my early teens. I guess the main points are the same: friends, family, food, booze, nice clothes, dancing, etc…but I also could not imagine a bread crocodile filled with petit fours at an American wedding. Having the married couple ride on a tractor is actually something I could see happening in North Dakota, though J

The other thing that was pretty different is how international it was: people were speaking French, German, English, Italian, even a little Dutch…it was interesting to meet older people fluent in a foreign language. The groom’s family comes from the region right on the border with Germany, and it was quite common for them to start in French, but seamlessly switch to German when they noticed their interlocutor didn’t understand.

It was all in all very lovely, and also a ton of fun—but when you mix the Erasmus-in-Berlin crew and an open bar, what else can you expect? Some of the highlights were undoubtedly:

--M. comparing me to an autumn leaf

--Hearing one of the Lac du Bois birthday songs sung in a real French context for the first time, excitedly telling this to A., singing it to him, and having him join in

--M. telling me he gets it, I can stop talking about Lac du Bois

--Me proclaiming I am an awesome drinking buddy and A. and J. wholeheartedly agreeing

--Learning the titular Dutch phrase (Hi! I’m Rachel, and I’m crazy). Apparently J. thought it was a priority that I learn this…

--Getting complimented on my pronunciation of “Geweldig” (great)

(Note: the reader should imagine a smiley face emoticon after every one of these J)

I’m sure there are more, but that’s what comes to mind!

I guess my only regret (apart from not bringing my camera, argh!!) is not brushing up on my Dutch a bit before I went. When you’ve only tried to learn a language for 2 weeks, a 2-week break is pretty long L I really wanted to say more, but I just couldn’t remember anything, and also never really learned modal verbs, so…meh. Sorry, J., maybe next time! (Hopelijk!)

Une semaine en France, pt. I: Mitfahr-Madness

This will be a long update (probably part 1 of 3), because a lot of exciting things happened. A couple of my friends of the Erasmus in Berlin crew got married this weekend, and, even though I decided about a week before the event that I could come, graciously allowed me to attend. Essentially, as soon as I found out I had a place in Hamburg for September, I scrambled to arrange transportation and lodging for the countryside wedding and my sidetrip to Paris SIMULTANEOUSLY, primarily because I couldn’t really afford to come to France twice, and I had left all of my fall and winter things in Paris, and it was starting to get cold already im hohen Norden. I lucked out though, since I found a Mitfahrgelegenheit from Hamburg to Saarbrücken for Friday—one of only two that week—and was also, amazingly, the first to contact the driver.

I may not have been so thrilled, however, if I had known exactly how long it would take to get there. I’ve done 10-hour drives before (Fargo—Chicago FTW!), but Google Maps said it would take about 6 hours, and that’s what I had mentally prepared myself for. Apparently, this may be true if you drive during the middle of the night, or even some other low-traffic time, but NOT if you travel on the weekend in Germany. Then there will be one solid traffic jam to wherever it is you want to go.

My driver actually realized this and wanted to leave at 8am. His boss, however, was also a big Google Maps believer, and decided that, since Google Maps said it would take 6 hours max to get to Saarbrücken, he could come to a meeting that morning. So our 8am departure time turned into 10am, and then, as his one meeting turned into two, finally 11:30am. This of course meant that I spent more than an hour anxiously waiting outside the hotel, while the workers wondered how in the world a taxi could be so slow. Nee, ich warte nicht auf einen Taxi, ich warte auf eine Mitfahrgelegenheit…

So we hit the road. The driver was actually pretty cool, a businessman of some sort, and was constantly phoning someone or another. He was really irked about having to leave later than expected, though, and after about 7 hours on the road, he sort of started to crack. He called his wife.

Driver: I’ve got half a mind to call him up, and say, “Greetings from Gießen”! Because there are two possibilities: either he doubts my competence, and thinks that I misplanned, or he doubts my loyalty, and thinks I was trying to get extra time off.

Wife: (calmly, almost matter-of-fact) You should! He needs to know. It’s not fair.

D: Yeah. Yeah, I think I will. Or just call him when I arrive, even if it’s midnight, just to say I got in alright.

Drama! He decides to call now rather than later, and picks out his boss’s name from the tricked-out car phone dash system.

Boss: Hallo, D!

D: Guten Tag, B! I just wanted to say, Schöne Grüße aus Gießen!

B: Ah, well, schöne Grüße aus Hafencity!

D: Yeah, we’re actually sitting in a traffic jam…weekend traffic, you know…

B: Ah, me too, unfortunately!

D: Yes, 6 hours have turned into 7 and there are still 250km to go! Needless to say, I may not be able to review all those videos tonight…

B: Oh, haha, well, that’s life…

D: Well, I just wanted to say hi! Have a nice weekend, then!

He hangs up.

Rachel: Hat er es überhaupt nicht kapiert?? (did he not get it at all??)

D: Entweder hat er es nicht kapiert, oder es interessiert ihn nicht. (Either he didn’t get it, or he’s not interested). Anyway, when I get back on Tuesday, I’m going to tell him I’m taking the rest of the week off because of the 45 hours of overtime I had to do this weekend, then when I come back the week after I’m going to put my resignation on his desk.

Yikes. He was serious, too, and started phoning some of his other business contacts to see if he could secure another job. Apparently this was not the first time this had happened…

But despite all this excitement and Aufregung, I did make it to Saarbrücken, and after another short drive (only half an hour, no traffic jams this time) I was in the tiny town of Laning, where part two of our story will take place!

Preemptive Nostalgia

It just hit me that I only have 2.5 months left in Paris. 2.5 months! (I'm a bit torn about whether to write this with a comma, but I guess I'll stick to my roots).

I was just in Cologne for a couple days, although not for the same reason as most people. I was taking exams, while most people were wearing ridiculous costumes and getting falling-down drunk before 10am. I had actually completely forgot Karneval would be starting, so this was a bit of a shock. It was an interesting experience, though, kind of like a no-age-limits, wasted Halloween. What I thought was kind of cool was that groups of friends would all wear the same costume, presumably to find each other better in a crowd.

Being in Germany was nice, but for once, I also really missed France. It's hard to explain why; was it just too clean, too orderly? Hardly, at least not on Thursday when Karneval started. Did I miss the cafés on every corner? The fromageries? Or was the large amount of sketchy people in Köln (at least around the Hauptbahnhof) just off-putting? I really can't put my finger on it.

It did, however, make me wonder where I will be happiest. I think a piece of my heart will always be in both places (and I guess in the U.S., too. And Italy).

And I definitely think I won't be ready to leave at the end of April.

On va prendre le risque

I passed another great French milestone yesterday--I experienced my first French strike!

It's kind of funny--I don't remember EVER being affected by a strike anywhere else I lived, but France is rather notorious for workers strikes (admit it, you are), and it was pretty excepted that I should live through at least one during my time here.

Essentially, this is what happened: both the RATP and SNCF workers who run the RER A and RER B (like S-Bahn/distance trains) were on strike (from what I understand, they had to get extra training and wanted to be paid more because of it), so the RER B--what I take--was only running piecewise, with no service between Gare du Nord and Denfort Rochereau. This was not a huge problem for me, since I take the normal métro in the morning to get to the Gare du Nord and then go to the suburbs from here. However, there were also only 1 of 2 trains running on the line (or 2 of 4, according to some sources :P).

50% is not so bad, I thought, and left at 9:30 instead of the usual 10 AM to get to my 11:30 class. What I did not anticipate, however, is that they would be leaving from a different track. After running around the station, which, while quite well-marked for the actual lines, is not very well-marked for track numbers, I finally found where I was supposed to be departing from. I thought.

Everyone else seemed similarly confused. "Does this train go to Charles DeGaulle?" asked some tourists.

"Yes, we think so," responded one of our fellow passengers. Well, that's reassuring. Sort of.

Others continued to board. "Excusez-moi, mais savez-vous si ce train va à Charles de Gaulle ?" a man asked me.

"Um, je suis pas sûre," I replied. "Il y a quelqu'un qui a dit que oui, mais je n'ai rien vu personellement." (I'm not sure...someone said it did, but I didn't see anything personally.)

Another man got in. He addressed the man who had just spoken to me. "Est-ce que ce train va à Charles de Gaulle ?"

"Nous, on pense que oui, mais on ne sait pas," he replied. "On va prendre le risque." (We think so, but we don't really know. We're going to take the risk.)

This answer just tickled me. Once again, despite an utter lack of information and the potential for chaos and confusion, the French manage to keep a level head. Bravo :)