A month from today, I'll be leaving on an Air Canada flight from O'Hare Airport which, after stops in Toronto and Munich, will take me to Marseille, France. Marseille, France's second largest city with a historic reputation as a nonconformist "Anti-Paris", is located on the Mediterranean just 30 kilometers south of Aix. To give you all a visual of where I'll be staying, here's a map showing Aix's location within France.
Because to hell with snow. Except for when I want it. But I'll get to that.
Aix-en-Provence (and that's probably the last time I'll refer to it by its full name instead of "Aix" because Aix-en-Provence is just too damn long of a name when you can just use a three-letter word instead and everyone understands what you're saying anyway) is generally considered to be a well-to-do bourgeois city; low on crime and very pleasing to the eye, but also pretty conservative and um, expensive. We'll see how that last one works out for me as the year goes on. The conservative bourgeois nature of the city, however, is checked by the fact that this city of over 100,000 people is also a major university town. I'll have to wait to see the city for myself before I'll be able to judge anything.
Among other people, painter Paul Cézanne and writer Émile Zola both spent significant parts of their lives in Aix. And it's known as the "City of a Thousand Fountains" because, while there might not be a full 1,000 of them, there is apparently, you know, a whole flopée, des tas, une chiée of them. That last one's "shitton" in French. Even shitton sounds nice in French. Ah.
Anyway, I'll be recording many of my adventures and misadventures (aside from those fueled by too much wine, which we can all agree are not in our best interest to describe at length on the Internet, n'est-ce pas?) during the course of the next year in this blog. And since I won't be calling home every week or communicating much in English while I'm in France (or German-speaking countries, for that matter), this will be a good way to keep everyone posted on what the bloody deuce I'm doing on the other side of the Atlantic. For now, I'll be seeing you in a month, France! I can hardly wait!
