Settling In

So after arriving in Aix late on the 20th and chilling with the three other guys from the program later that night, it was business for the next couple days, but we got to start exploring more of the town that is going to be our home for the next year and get back into French-speaking mode in the process. The other guys and I started the day on Thursday (the 21st) with quick trip to the closest boulangerie (bakery, for you Anglos) and got a couple pastries for breakfast. Personally, I got my first genuine French pain au chocolat (simple, but so good!), a poulet poireau (small, flaky pastry stuffed with chicken and leeks) and a good old-fashioned baguette. Stuff at the local bakeries is all pretty cheap and high-quality (even though you can also get baguettes at the local supermarket for 20 centimes less, why would you?). So much bread already.I remember reading somewhere that before the French Revolution, the average French peasant ate two pounds of bread per day. TWO POUNDS. And while it's obviously much less now that France is a wealthy, modern country where people can afford to eat a balanced diet, France would still be a living hell to anyone with celiac disease, good God.

At 10:00, our entire group met in front of the Hotel Adagio for a practical tour to find out where some of the essential places in town are. The central landmark in Aix from which the most important streets ray out is a giant fountain called La Rotonde.

One of these main streets is the Cours Mirabeau, a broad avenue lined with tall, graceful platanes (trees which are the European species of sycamore, or so it appears). Before the Revolution, only aristocrats were allowed to walk there. Or sorry, not walk. No, be carried by their servants in litters was more like it. Jesus. Say what you will about the bloodshed that happened afterwards, but the Ancien Régime had to go, and if a few of those arrogant aristocrats had to lose their head to make it happen, so be it. Nowadays, it's a street where a thriving market selling various regional products is held three times a week and one particularly attractive piece of eye candy sells fancy hats. Taking her picture would have been a bit invasive, so just believe me here, folks.

One thing that no one had told us about before we arrived, however, was that the week of our arrival was the 70th anniversary of the Liberation of Provence from Nazi Germany, and that there was a military parade happening on the Cours Mirabeau with American tanks and some American veterans, apparently. I actually had the chance to talk briefly with a French veteran who was a member of the Free French while we were eating lunch on some steps next to La Rotonde. His very strong accent du Midi (southern French accent), rendered harder to understand by the fact that he was an old man who stammered somewhat as he talked and the fact that I had just arrived in France and was speaking English with the other Americans a few seconds earlier, made for a rather short, somewhat confusing exchange, in which he flashed us the impressive array of military medals and I, not really knowing what to say, thanked him for what he had done and said it was nice to meet him. Anyway, here's a picture that I snapped later in the day of a couple of the tanks. Edit: Oops, I didn't realize that I only got the Jeeps in this picture. I've been kind of "écervelé" these last few days and have had to take frequent naps just to feel normal. It's tiring, using a language other than your native one all day when you're not used to it!

At noon, we stopped in at a cell phone store to get some of these modern communication concerns out of the way. Since I'd already had my new iPhone unblocked back in the States and wanted to continue to use it as my phone both because it's, you know, a pretty damn useful device that also doubles as a decent camera, all I had to was pay 10 euros to get a new SIM card and have a few minutes/texts put on my phone until I had a bank account set up from which I could set up a plan. It was a much simpler process than everyone made it out to be, which was a relief.

And as it turned out, our housing situation wasn't as figured out in advance as I thought it was, so we spent the rest of the day looking into housing options, since every additional night that we spent in a hotel was going to cost us big bucks. Beaucoup de fric which we're certainly going to need later, considering that basic food items cost a fortune in Aix, with the exception of bread, cheese, and wine (which is DEFINITELY a basic necessity, don't even try to argue with me otherwise!!). We toured several apartments and visited a few families/individuals who were renting out rooms in their houses and apartments. As far as housing goes, since the program was extremely vague about what our options were, I was under the impression that we would be able to room with other international or French students. And normally this would be the case, but our program arrived in Aix a solid two weeks before the rest of the students looking for apartments would. Hmm. Problematic. I was pretty upset about this because, don't get me wrong guys, but I wanted to be damn sure that I would be in a living arrangement where no English is spoken, and living with other Americans...no. Sorry. I left the country for a reason.

Anyway, moving on. There were fortunately the rented room options, available with or without the board part of room and board. Some of the apartments were pretty legit buildings, and one of the houses in which two students could stay downstairs at a French woman's house with a garden sounded pretty nice as well. I immediately preferred one of the options over the others, though, and my mind was made up after touring their apartment. I ended up picking to stay with a retired couple (Monsieur and Madame Masson) on the fifth floor (in French, quatrième étage, since the ground floor is considered the rez-de-chaussée, the ground floor) of an apartment building in the newer side of town. It's a really comfortable, it doesn't smell like mildew like the buildings that are several centuries old in the Vielle Ville, I have my own balcony, and the Massons have been very welcoming - I can tell that I'm going to like staying here. I'll leave it at that for today, and I'll have to write one more blog entry to catch up and discuss the beginning of classes. But here's a picture of my balcony that I'll leave you with.

Ahhh.

Arrival Time

Whew. It's been a long couple days, but here I am in Aix-en-Provence after a couple unexpectedly exhausting travel days and some really busy days of initial post-arrival business, finally with enough time to write a blog entry after a nice, long nap! Anyway, this is probably going to be a fairly long post discussing my arrival in Aix and not much of what actually happened in the few days after that. I'll be writing another post immediately after this one to talk about more of this eventful first week.

I left Michigan City at around 11:00 on August 19, which already seems like an eternity ago, even though it was in fact, um, less than a week ago. I had to pack everything that I was going to need for the year in one 50 lb suitcase, one carry-on bag, and one extra carry-on item, which meant that I fortunately did NOT have to wear my black trench coat on the plane in August like I originally feared and setting every security sensor in the whole damn airport.  On my first flight (to Toronto) I ended up sitting next to a very attractive Swiss woman who was coming back from vacation in the U.S., and it turns out that she had spent a fair amount of time in Provence, including in Aix itself. We spoke in a mixture of French and English, and then we finished the short flight and I got ready to go my connecting flight in Munich.

And that's where my débutant status as an international traveler became incredibly obvious.

You see, the plane to Toronto was already over an hour late due to storms that were apparently occurring over Michigan, leaving me with slightly under an hour to get to the gate and catch my flight. Fine, easy. Except...this is me we're talking about, guys. I was surprised that we had to fill out a declaration form first (despite the fact that I was obviously doing nothing more than traveling through the Toronto airport and not actually touching Canadian soil), something which I didn't have to do in Germany (where I entered Europe and thus the Schengen Agreement Area, of which France is part) nor in France. You know, the country that I'm actually staying in. Where there was nobody at the customs counter for me to even report to. Nobody.

Anyway, when I asked which door I needed to go through after talking to the customs official (nothing was really clearly marked) he gave me some misleading directions which led to me walking directly past the portly Hispanic man who barely spoke English at the point of no return. Damnit. I actually stopped to ask the guy where to go next, literally as I had taken one step past him. The guy instead started yelling at me, babbling something along the lines of GTFO and go through security again, not my problem.

F#$@.

At this point, "youppi, I'm going to France!" Erik turned into this:

Just subtract the boobs and put on a shirt, you hippie. A Hawaiian shirt, to be exact.

 

Realizing that I know had about a half hour to make it through the last part of customs, go back through security, and make it to my gate, I went into powerdrive mode and went on the longest all-out sprint of my life, while wearing hiking boots and a Hawaiian shirt. I was the guy who was sweating bullets, was damn near bursting into tears, and nearly knocked over a poor old man who didn't hear me yell, "EXCUSE ME, COMING THROUGH!" as I was running full speed over the moving walkways on the way to security. And at that point, I saw how long and slowly moving the security line was and I thought my goose was surely cooked. But fortunately, a German family was right in front of me in line, and when I asked them in a pitiful, quivering voice if they were also flying to Munich, they told me that they weren't, but they seemed to understand the situation that I found myself in, because they told me to go in front of them in the line, and thanks to the infectious kindness of everyone in Canada except for the people actually working at the airport (who were taking their sweet time with everything), I ended up at the front of what was probably a half-hour long security line within a couple minutes. I made it through and, after hearing my name on the last call for boarding on the flight to Munich (which nearly made me void my bowels, good God), a sweaty, panting, and probably rather smelly Erik stumbled onto the plane, which ended up leaving late anyway. If the poor Indian man sitting next to me during the flight ever reads this, I am SO sorry that I had to be that guy. Jesus.

 

But wait! There's more travel drama to come, albeit not of the variety that a sadistic bystander would have found as humorous as my adventures in Toronto. Due to a delay of about 40 minutes in Toronto, I knew that the chances of not making my final connecting flight to Marseille were pretty good. Add to that the fact that I had a minor hang-up at the security checkpoint, and I pretty much knew that I wasn't going to make it. I somehow set off the metal detector in Munich and the agent that was doing the scanning was having some trouble finding what the source of the problem was, so I was treated to a lovely full-service patdown. It turns out that there was a paper clip in my shoe. A GOD DAMN PAPER CLIP. We all found this pretty hilarious, and the agent yelled to one of his colleagues to tell her what just set the metal detector off while we were all laughing our asses off. By the time I made it to the gate, it was already too late. But plenty of other people on my flight had similar problems, and the Lufthansa help desk (where the woman I talked too seemed relieved that there are indeed some Americans who can actually speak German) quickly arranged for me to go on a flight leaving four hours later.

 

As good airports for unexpected four-hour layovers go, Munich would definitely top my list, considering that I speak the language, I could sneak in some beer and currywurst, and I know how to get around the terminal since I'd been here once before. After a couple hours and a couple beers, however, all I wanted to do was get to the Hotel Adagio and crash. So you can only imagine how excited I was to see this at around 5:00 on August 20th.

.

 

This picture was one I quickly snapped from my airplane window of the Calanques (a rugged, wild area of the Mediterranean coast which is immediately next door to Marseille, the second largest city in France) and the southern end of the ville phocéene. It's not a terribly good one, but I was immediately struck by the beauty of the whole landscape (except for the mining areas). I should back to see Marseille and the Calanques pretty soon, but for the time being, I just wanted to get to Aix. I took a taxi into town, was dropped off at the Hotel Adagio and ate some goat cheese sandwiches and apple tarts with the other Americans (who, with the exception of one, all arrived before I did) and started to settle into my room. And finally, when the three other American guys and I found ourselves strolling on one of the narrow, crooked streets filled with smoky bars grouillant de monde (swarming with people) and we found ourselves sharing a bottle of wine and ordering kir and cognac to go with a pizza we were sharing, it sank in. I was in France.