Archive for October 2nd, 2009

…And then the room stood still…

Today I spent most of the day in Lille, where I met up with my former roommate Rachel King. We had an interesting experience in the Fives neighborhood — the Brooklyn of Lille — when we decided to buy coffee at a bar for the purpose of using their toilet facilities. As we walked in, the dozen or so people in the room literally froze, as if they were in a movie freeze-frame, and peeled their eyes at us through a haze of cigarette smoke. I guess we didn’t quite “fit in” with that crowd — among the dozen was a buff bartender with tattoos and piercings and shaved head, a 14-year-old girl dressed like a bowler, a shit-faced 80-year-old woman who arrived with her equally shit-faced son, and an enormous dog. All in all, was a really great experience, one of the best today — except, perhaps, conversing in French with the Halal restauranteur and his customer.

Prior to meeting up with Rachel, I also visited the Musee des Beaux Artes this morning, where I saw a lot of impressionist stuff and violent Jesuses — that is, until I was museum-ed out for the morning. It’s slightly challenging for me to spend more than an hour in an art museum for some reason. I love the paintings and they’re all gorgeous, but my eyelids inevitably start drooping after an hour or so.

After the art museum, I met with the Chabad rabbi of Lille, who told me about the latest anti-Semitic violence in the area — and there’s a ton. He discussed how lot’s of French Jews are making aliyah to Israel for this very reason. His children were adorable, and the two little boys helped their father build a Sukkah, with the younger boy pretending he was a chevalier riding a tree branch.

What else? The hostel seems clean and nice — it’s a bit of an adjustment though to have four roommates, when they all want to sleep at different times than you do! But I’ll deal, I’m en vacances, after all!

Okay, well, I think I’ll get to bed for the night now too, as it is approaching midnight. Tomorrow morning, I spend with Rachel again, and then I’m off solo for the rest of the trip, heading first to Annecy in the Alps.

Au revoir!

My first blog post from France!

I landed about an hour and a half ago, and now I’m hanging out in Charles De Gaulle Airport, waiting for my first train — to Lille. Not much to type as of yet, but I do have to say that the France rail “chime” or theme tune or whatever you want to call it sounds like a weird suspense sequence in a 1990s video game.

One funny thing did happen yesterday before I even left for the airport — I learned to pack like a man, well, sort of.  So I borrowed my friend’s real backpacker’s backpack for this voyage and decided to stuff it to full capacity like any woman would. When I finally got to my office, however, two of the men there successfully convinced me to empty out half of the clothes and toiletries that I had originally packed. I have never traveled with so few sets of clothing! Hope there are laundry machines somewhere.