Goodbye Toulouse

For my last trick I'm going to present the classic blog fallback (gotta save time for packing!): top 5 lists.

My Top 5 Things I will miss about Toulouse/France in general (a prediction):
1. Easily accessible and cheap public transportation
2. The constant challenge of learning a second language
3. Delicious pastries beautifully presented on every street corner
4. Their attitude regarding vacation (out of my seven month contract I got eight weeks of it)
5. The ATMs, which distribute a variety of bills and sometimes ask you which combination of ten-, twenty-, and fifty-euro bills you would like
6. Meeting new people from all over the world on a regular basis
7. The four public parks with flowerbeds and fountains and statues I walk through to get to work
8. Cheese, Gromit!
9. People who understand the French words I no longer remember how to say in English

My Top 5 Things I WILL NOT miss about Toulouse/France (also a prediction):
1. People don't talk to you unless they have a reason to know you
2. Five signed and dated documents with photocopies of your passport, work contract, and birth certificate are required to do anything as much as pick your nose
3. Stores are closed frequently and at unpredictable hours
4. Reliable wifi is hard to come by
5. The << crotte de chien >> that pollutes the sidewalks
6. The fifteen-minute walk to the nearest Laundromat, and the seven euros it costs to do one load
7. My freezing cold apartment

My Top 5 Things I can't wait to return to in the US! (an actuality)
1. My People!
2. My Family
3. My Friends
4. Other people I kind of know through said friends and family
5. Speaking my native language without being self-conscious about it
6. Root beer
7. People I've known for longer than six months
8. The beautiful San Francisco Bay
9. The similarly beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains
10. Cheddar cheese, bagels, milkshakes, cinnamon rolls, smoothies, brown sugar, and Adam's peanut butter
11. Reliable Internet
12. A familiar house
13. Real showers (the kind that have fixed heads and are fully enclosed)

France, adieu! Hello, California.

Exploring the French Riviera

From Pisa in Italy, the train runs along the coast all the way to Narbonne, France (with only a short jog inland from Saint-Raphael to (some other place), which I traveled by boat and bus). Taking this train, I got to see many, many miles of Mediterranean coast, from small villages clinging to the hills of Tuscany to the wild red rocky outcroppings near Fréjus to the proud white halls and abundant graffiti of Marseille. Along the way I stopped in Nice, Eze-sur-Mer, Monaco, Antibes, Fréjus, Saint-Rafaël, Saint-Tropez, Toulon, and Marseille before heading inland to Aix-en-Provence and finally back to Toulouse (all pictured in the slideshow except Saint-Raphaël).

Live from Florence

I find myself once again taken away from any context I understand. This time I've journeyed to the Mecca of Renaissance art: Florence ("Firenze" in Italian). I've been here for less than a day, and already I've admired Michelangelo's David, read the inscription on Dante's tomb, and eaten bona fide Italian gelato. I've seen so many early Renaissance paintings my eyes hurt.

As most of the few hours I've spent here have been nighttime hours, however, I've spent the most time in the hostel. The hostel is clearly a converted apartment near the center of downtown, and the conversion hasn't been all that extensive. It appears that most of the converting effort went into taking out the dining tables, sofas, and pianos that might have filled the four rooms before and replacing them with many single beds. The bathroom, shared by eight people, is divided into two adjacent rooms: one with a shower, toilet, and lavabo, and the other with bathtub, sink, mirror, and second lavabo. In spite of its quirks, the place is clean and there are kitchen and Internet facilities, so as a place to base my exploration of Florence out of I'm satisfied with it. It also has the obligatory Australian traveler, who in this case seems never to leave the hostel and who is friendly as can be.

Staying at such an establishment makes me feel like I'm truly living the life of the young adult wanderer. Part of the fun of traveling is meeting unexpected challenges. And there is a kind of harmony or rightness in staying in the company of literal travelers, all trying to understand what human life means by seeing much of it geographically and culturally. I am, after all, exploring a city positively brimming with art trying to encompass and portray something essential about the human journey. Human life is complicated, and there is MUCH to see and many challenges, but there is some comfort in knowing being alive is challenging to everyone.

Improvising to Learn

Last week I was getting a drink in a bar with a friend (like you do on Wednesday evening when you're in Europe) when an improvisation group popped out of the ether. They asked for donations of theme ideas from every patron in the bar before introducing themselves as the improv class from a local university and informing us that they would be in charge of entertainment for the next hour or so. They were very funny; they succeeded even in entertaining me, a non-native French speaker. This is partially because they were relying heavily on facial expressions and gestures to communicate, but also because they would announce the theme -- usually a combination of an event or situation and an adjective not usually associated with that situation -- before the action commenced, so that I went into the scene expecting a certain set of vocabulary. The theme for one scene, for example, was a college party at an ice-skating rink that was also a zoo. Once they said that (in relatively simple phrases) I had context for interpreting their conversations. I could recognize the social insecurities they made funny by exaggerating them into the characteristics of animals.

In real life, it's not so easy. People rarely announce in a loud voice the next subject they wish to discuss. There is sometimes that one person ready to state the obvious -- and for that I am grateful -- as in, "My, it looks like the fountain has flooded. Look at the water running all over the place!" Then I've got the word for "fountain" and which verb is used to express water in the act of spreading over a flat surface. (These statements are even more helpful when they have to do with people or social states. I can see when I'm in danger of getting my shoes wet, but I have a harder time knowing why a friend is upset to see that a party is going on until she tells me later that no one invited her.) Oftentimes I can only find out the correct verb for "to spread" in the fountain situation by playing the confused American and asking, "Is all that water being propagated from the fountain?" Usually some kind soul will patiently explain that I've used the wrong word. That situation has come up so many times at this point that it's stopped bothering me; if I jump in without being afraid of making a mistake I get to learn the correct word, and most people understand it's hard to learn a second language anyway. Plus, if they can give me the right word that means they knew what I meant, which is, after all, the primary use of language. My misuse may even cause them to smile.

Stranger at the Seaside

What are you doing when you visit a place for the first time? You are a stranger. Your only business there is to be there. You don't know the best spots for lunch or the best activities available, so you eat lunch at the first restaurant in the right price range and you do the things that other people seem to be enjoying. You walk around and you learn quickly. That's the fun of visiting a new place really: without prior information, you get the chance to apply your judgment and your whimsical fancies to a totally unfamiliar landscape and just see what happens.

In my case, when I visited the small town of Biarritz on the southern Atlantic coast of France, I spent most of my time walking up and down the beach. I found that was all I wanted. The ocean had been missing from my life more than I had thought, and to me, the feeling of the cool and salty breeze on my skin and the rhythmic sound of the waves was peace.

Toulouse Gelée

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m from California, where extreme weather is a few days of rain or a night in the low twenties. I’ve always had a romantic idea of winter: the peaceful snow that blankets the city and clear cold night walks when you can look up at the twinkling stars from a scarved and hatted bundle and then go home to hot chocolate next to the fire. There would be snow days when you could frolic in the snow.

Oh boy, did I have a thing or two to learn about winter.

Perhaps I could have enjoyed the snow if my apartment had a lower ceiling, or a more modern heating system, or if I had the proper clothing for snow. But as it was, the advent of snow in Toulouse meant cold like I could never have imagined. Cold that lasts. Cold that gets into your bones. Going outside was miserable even after I figured out to wear seven layers and gloves because you never can cover your nose and the sidewalks got treacherously slippery with ice. Staying inside was miserable because my heater wasn’t powerful enough to banish the seven layers. Frolicking wasn’t an option during my four snow days because there would be no way to dry off or warm up afterwards if I lost the weak flicker of heat I was able to maintain. I felt paralyzed anew after I had finally gotten some level of familiarity with life in France.

On the up side, the snow and ice did give Toulouse a sparkling, highlighted face, and I did get some pretty awesome photos.

Now, after two weeks of abnormally cold weather, the city has thawed and the sun is out again. The sun already seems warmer than ever, and I will appreciate the coming of spring on a more visceral level than I ever have before.

The English Invasion

I see Toulouse with an outsider’s eyes, and particularly with the eyes of an American. And, contrary to what you might think, the observations that stand out the most to me are not those things that are different. Everything is different. If my brain picked out every single new and different thing I saw when I got here it would have burst into a soggy whizzing mess. (Actually, according to what jet lag felt like, my brain may have tried to identify every difference before quickly realizing the impossibility of that endeavor.) Instead, what stand out the most to me are the flashes of familiarity in this strange landscape, things I thought I left when I jumped continents.

American culture has a definite presence in France. The most obvious examples are fast-food restaurants. There are two MacDonald’s in downtown Toulouse and at least two Domino’s. We do hear about the prevalence of low-quality American chains all over the world in the U.S. though, so I was less shocked and more generally depressed to see it was true when I encountered these restaurants. The same sentiment resurged when I saw how many French restaurants the American style inspired (including Quick and Boum Burger). It really did come as a shock to discover that the popularity of American culture goes further than fast-food restaurants. English words appear frequently in advertisements and cutesy store and restaurant names. The French are prickly about their language – the Académie Française still closely regulates the appropriation of new words – but despite the Académie’s insistence on tradition, the world of marketing has accepted English words with alacrity.

That English appears to the outsider most often in advertising indicates a fascination with American culture that I find exceedingly difficult to understand. To me it’s the presence of history, the fact that you can see the results of ancient tastes and events alongside present life, that makes France appealing. I love the constant acknowledgement of the past. But to the French, old buildings and tradition are only normal. They are proud, and they love their Frenchness, but what’s intriguing to them is America’s focus on the future. I’ve spoken to many French people on this subject, and they all communicate the same point of view. They say things like, “la culture de la France est en train de mourir;” “La France dort;” “Mais qu’est-ce que vous faites ici si vous êtes de San Francisco?” French culture is dying; France sleeps; what are you doing here if you’re from San Francisco? They say France does everything America does, only ten years behind. The same American determination to look forward and be productive and create the future that I find frustrating and artificial they find exciting. And so it is that I see my native language and culture bounced around playfully and used to sell things. It’s more than a little bizarre.

A World Below

The streets of Toulouse are beautiful. I never tire of peering up at the stained art deco windows or the pointed and crenellated towers built by rich 17th century dye merchants. The sight of many wrought-iron balconies and tall, thin windows gleaming in the afternoon sun is a sight as pleasing to the eye as one can reasonably hope for in one day. Even so, my favorite part of everyday life in Toulouse lies underground: my metro ride.

Toulouse's metro system is clean, efficient, and highly accessible. With a student rate of 10 euros per month, it is more student-friendly than any other city in France. Each station boasts a unique and artistic architectural plan: for example, the one I use to access the train most often has a giant black tree statue made out of shiny black mosaic tiles that reaches all the way up the wall. It looks quite impressive contrasted against the wall's white rectangualr tiles. Another station has an enormous display of glass panels that resemble the heavens as it curves over you above the escalator. Each station is also unique in its particular combination of staircases and escalators and number of floors. The network reaches much of the city, so even without a car I can reach most any part of the city easily. That one freedom makes a huge difference!

The metro is practical and convenient, but it is also a significant landscape in my everyday life. I don't live downtown, so outside of groceries and laundry I take the metro to get everywhere, work- or play-related. It's never a task, however: I enjoy the experience of riding the metro as much as I like the freedom it affords me. In contrast to the chaotic, preoccupied, unfriendly, fashion-obsessed and generally unsatisfying world of human concerns it contains, the system itself is sleek and efficient. Since the rules of polite metro conduct forbid eye contact, touching strangers more than absolutely necessary, commenting on rude sounds and unusual baggage, or asking questions, it's easy (and indeed encouraged) to pretend that world has temporarily ceased to exist. When you descend the escalator to the underground platform, you escape to a world of bright, shiny white tile, steel rails, and concrete tunnels. Once the train has come rushing up, a strictly timed mechanism opens all the doors at once and spews commuters out. A buzz informs those ascending that the doors are about to close and the train takes off, zooming at exactly the prescribed speed. And since the trains have windows and the tunnels are lit with white lights every couple of meters, a passenger at the very back of the train may watch the tracks fall away behind her in long, gentle curves outlined in parallel tracks. She will see a passing train speed away with its human cargo packed in yellow plastic train cars as if they were lunch packed in fast-moving tupperware. She may observe platform after glass-insulated platform arrive and disappear around a twist or rise of the tunnel and imagine she has found order at last.

On every thrilling ride, the time comes when you hear the recording of a melodious female voice announce your stop (in French and then in Occitan, the dialect native to Southern France). The moment of peace and excitement ends abruptly as you fight the inelegant throng crowding out of the car and up the escalator and you surface, thrown once again into the uncertain world of turmoil and decisions.

A Night at the Théâtre

Though there are many theatres in Toulouse and spectacles are well publicized, I was not motivated to track one down and buy a ticket until I saw a poster for Paroles Gelées, a stage adaptation of the works of François Rabelais playing at the Théâtre Nationale de Toulouse. You may be waiting for the rest of the information I had about this play that made it leap out as something I could not miss, but for me that was enough: you see, I spent my last semester of college working on an independent study, the subject of which was one of Rabelais's works. I was already familiar, nay enamored with Rabelais's imagination, corporal frankness, and word-level humor. So when I, amateur Rabelais scholar and lover of words, saw that a theatre in downtown Toulouse happened to be staging what they announced to be a "theatrical adventure" based on that author and called "Frozen Words," I thought I had finally found the reason for my coming to France.

I may have exaggerated in the over-excited state the poster inspired, but the sentiment was rekindled as I watched the opening of the spectacle. The director, Jean Bellorini, adapted the series of novels by extracting the central adventure and having the cast narrate it while acting out key scenes. The narrative moved the story along, but by inserting comic conversations among the characters and repetitive monologues, Bellorini managed to preserve Rabelais's light-hearted style and habit of going into absurdly colorful and precise detail.

The set design also helped to preserve Rabelais's lexical opulence by reflecting the referential abundance with an abundance of color, light, and movement. For example, in the beginning of the play when one character invited the others to a feast, the black curtain lifted to reveal a collection of women in colorful dresses and rain boots playing miss-matched accordions on top of a table, which stood in about three inches of water. The water covered the whole stage within a large sandbox-like container and turned the stage into a moving mirror of the copper-colored and blue lighting. A man in a kilt danced sensuously as he listed off foodstuffs that might have laden a dining table.

Bellorini even did a good job of preserving Rabelais's language. He represented the difficulty every reader of Rabelais has in wrangling the antiquated and liberal prose by devoting a character to translation and interpretation, like a Rabelais expert, who explained words that Rabelais made up and who gave information as needed about the context the play was written in. Because the other characters hopped in and out, sometimes a part of the action and sometimes narrating the action, the translator figure was a natural addition. He interacted with the other characters and the audience with ease and humor.

To my frustration, my brain could only absorb the French words for about two-thirds of the performance, and after two and a half hours I was confused and tired. I watched the characters arrive in the land of frozen words with very little intellectual energy left to understand how the words got there or why they were frozen. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and only wished I could see it a second time.

Foix and California

The similarities between France and California come up often in conversation. People note that both have a gently warm and dry climate, and then that both regions produce wine. They remark that San Francisco is a very European city (what they mean by this is not always clear, but I think they're pointing to the liberal political views and the appreciation of good food). This link may be true theoretically, but Toulouse has never particularly resembled my birth state in my eyes. In practice, the linguistic difference is pretty significant. So is the lack of family and old friends. The geographical differences, though slight perhaps on the scale of possible landscapes over the Earth, are still jarring to me. Toulouse is far from the ocean - there is no cool cloud layer in the morning, no hint of salt in the air, no watery vistas. There is no threat of earthquakes here, so, far from avoiding brick as a potentially hazardous building material, the people of Toulouse use brick so much it has become a point of pride. And compared to the rises of the Oakland hills, Toulouse is totally flat.

The lack of hills in my immediate context has been getting to me, so I decided to take the train to the little town of Foix (pronounced "Fwa") for the afternoon. Foix is situated at the base of the Pyrénée mountains, so I was prepared for cold with three sweaters, but I was lucky: it was sunny out, almost warm even. Perfect weather for a hike. I identified a trailhead using a map of the village posted by the train station and started walking. And I found something I wasn't expecting: the longer I walked, the more I felt at home. The path was a steep climb -- a good beginning for my hill-deprived legs -- through a wood of oak trees. As I got higher I could look across the valley where the town is situated to a display of other hills, and the mountains behind them. Near the top I passed grassy pastures where cows might graze. The act of hiking itself contributed to the feeling that I had somehow closed the gap to home, since when I'm at home I hike the hills frequently with my family or alone. It seemed strange that not only was the highway below me not I-5 or 101, I didn't even know what combination of letters and numbers might designate it as a highway.

I didn't come to France looking for California, and I didn't find it. But finding a familiar landscape was comforting -- my eyes, which grew up expecting to see the world arranged in a certain way, sighed with relief. Though it's exciting to see for myself that the world is not all arrayed in the same way, and though I've gotten used to the brick-lined streets that just won't descend, my eyes are still Californian eyes.

Christmas Magic European Style

I had never heard of a Christmas market before I was in Nantes studying during the month of December. At that time, two years ago, I was very surprised to see rows upon rows of little wooden cabins materialize in two of Nantes's biggest squares and fill with toys, jewelry, colored lamps and scarves, dried fruit, mulled wine, sausage, and pretzels. But upon returning to Europe, I see that such a public collection of holiday festivity is the standard approach to winter: during my travels in the end of December I witnessed Christmas markets (or "les marchés de noël") in Toulouse, Luxembourg, Wiesbaden (in Germany), and London. Though they shared enough characteristics to safely huddle together in the same category of event, I'm glad to have seen so many because they are by no means the same.

Toulouse's market was only one step in a whole slew of Christmas festivities. In addition to the enormous light display over the hut village, the passage through the capitol building (passage Henri IV) had transformed into a carnival complete with a display of a gypsy camp and posters for attractions such as a magician professor who can make demons appear. On the other side of the passage a temporary indoor theatre had been set up where a fairy-tale spectacle took place every hour all afternoon the two Saturdays before Christmas. I missed the spectacle, unfortunately, but I did get a look at two displays on either side of the theatre, both tacky yet enchanting. The first one showed water and earth fairies frozen in various positions upon their branches. The second showed miniature geese arranged in human attitudes in winter scenes, like a camp amid a snowy forest and an ice cavern with little glittering icicles. I also caught a performance of three of La Fontaine's fables in shadow puppets with musical accompaniment. Pictures with Santa, personalized hats made out of junk, face painting, and random sightings of brass musicians on bicycles were also available.

I had the most time to enjoy the Toulouse market, so there I got to experience a whole range of events. But it was by no means a paltry thing to walk through the Christmas market in Luxembourg. Since the tradition originates in the northeastern region of France, Alsace, even the Toulouse market had a northern, mountainous theme; in Luxembourg, which is much closer geographically to Alsace, that theme resonates. In the relatively small market there, I ate authentic sausages (mettwurst and white grillwurscht) and authentic glühwein (warm mulled wine) in a covered area filled with high tables and people talking from underneath their bundles of scarves and hats. I was especially impressed by the stage near the covered area from which a choir and a performer with a guitar took turns serenading the crowd.

In Wiesbaden, Germany, the lights were exceptionally well done. Unlike Toulouse's sheets of lights draped down the front of city hall and over the center of the market like a tunnel, the lights in Wiesbaden were shaped like giant flowers or bunches of leaves sheltering the market stalls. Here, too, there was a stage where schoolchildren sang, and here I enjoyed more glühwein (you can't have too much around Christmas) with a meal of kartoffelpuffer, a delicious potato pancake almost exactly like latkes, and apple sauce. The gorgeous red neo-gothic church of Saint Bonifatius just next to the market square contrasted pleasantly with the blue-roofed retail huts.

Given the Christmas market's continental origin, I was surprised to see that London, too, puts on a market for Christmas. The tradition lost some of its charm over the Channel, I fear: London's market struck me as commercial and touristy. Perhaps that effect is due to the sheer size of the city. In any case, even though the market in Hyde Park was larger than those in Luxembourg or Wiesbaden, it was packed. Its wooden huts were decorated with evergreen garlands and little silver reindeer, but the effect was not pleasant enough to make up for the tight rows of people. Since I had already tried sausage and mulled wine in the heart of sausage country, I did not try the sausage offered there. I did try a different sort of local specialty, however: gummy beer. I didn't believe it at first -- I thought the glass-shaped candy must be soda flavored - but no, it clearly said BEER printed on the candy itself. Sadly, they had not figured out how to make a gummy candy taste like delicious British ale, and I could not even swallow it. I was relieved to get out.

By the time I got back to Toulouse, the Christmas market had been taken down and the lights extinguished. It was back to normal life -- the next magic to illuminate the city will be the coming of spring.