Vocab: la foule - the crowd
This entry, which has a lot to do with art and music, comes in movements.
Stub 1: Opera Graslin
To begin at the beginning, I went to the opera on the sixth of October -- long, long ago. Another introductory remark: I am very grateful to IES for buying tickets and organizing outings to the opera. That being said, the tickets they reserved toyed with my heart in the worst way. I had signed up with a group of friends, but since I kept forgetting to add my name to the list, I ended up getting the last available ticket. I therefore knew we would not be sitting together, but upon arrival, we discovered that we were in completely separate boxes. Now, the idea of a box at the opera was a total thrill to me, so one can only imagine my chagrin when I entered my orchestra level box (!) only to discover half of the stage obscured by the balcony overhang. As it turned out, though, I was among the lucky few who could actually see all the action on stage. I missed a certain amount of the scenery, but I had a clear view of the bottom half of the stage, which was quite enough to see all of the (incredible) period costumes.
Some very weird layout spacing is about to occur here. But, here are the first two stops from my whirlwind tour of Dublin on Saturday. To the left is the only picture I was allowed to take of the National Museum and to the right is Grafton Street, great for people watching, shopping, and generally pretending to be Irish. NB: The National Museum is chock full o' Irish art and history, including several petrified corpses or "Bog Men" -- relics of an ancient clan recently discovered in (surprise!) an Irish bog.
Above, please find evidence of the various theatrics that take place in Dublin. Also, Leprechauns exist!
Dublin is the perfect place to be a literature nerd. To the left, I've taken a moment out of my day to read a little Proust at the James Joyce center and to the right I've cracked open my copy of Joyce's Dubliners (which I bought at a fantastic used book store) in front of the James Joyce statue.
And what would a trip to Dublin be with out some culinary exploration? No? You're not with me on this one? Well, at any rate, to the left you will notice my extreme trepidation before diving into a plate of bangers and mash, but perhaps I'm just overwhelmed by the excitement in the pub mere hours before the start of the Ireland vs. Italy football match. To the right, note my pride after sampling my first "sip" of Guinness.
Sunday morning, we took yet another turn around the city before my departure, stopping first at Dublin Castle (to the left) and then taking a load off at St. Stephen's Green, which wasn't far from the AirCoach stop. Throughout the weekend, I felt like I was walking on air, not cobblestones and pavement. I was relieved. In Dublin, everyone understood me: the language barrier was basically non-existent, and I passed my time with friends who know me so well that I never have to explain myself to them. It was hard to leave, but there were, nevertheless, things to look forward to in Nantes.
Stub 3: Phoenix à La Carrière
And now we're about back up to date. Phew! Last night, my friend Christiana and I went to see the band Phoenix perform at La Carrière this huge venue out in the suburbs (les banlieues). At this point, Phoenix is pretty well-known in the states, and even though they sing in English, they are, first and foremost, a French indie group. They were on their home turf last night and it was astonishing.
I'd already been to a few smaller concerts around Nantes, and I'd fallen victim to the growing fear that French people never dance at concerts. It was all the more terrifying when, at La Carrière the entire enormous crowd stood stock still throughout the entire opening set. It was Chairlift. While French indie has reached the states, some American indie still clearly has yet to capture French audiences. After Chairlift's lukewarm reception, imagine my surprise at the crowd's roar when Phoenix finally came on -- punctually, might I add. France has no time for rock star theatrics: Chairlift started 10 minutes early and Phoenix came on promptly at 9:30. Swept up in the tidal wave of people, I hardly had to do anything to feel like I was dancing. The tightly packed crowd nudged me into unison with its swaying and jumping.
I'd never had more people ask me if I was British.
Stub 4: Tickets de Repas
Two days a week, I eat lunch at the University Restaurant (Restau-U or RU, pronounced: roo). I've written a fair amount about my frustrations with the atmosphere: the crush of students all trying to squeeze in a meal during the 1 1/2 hours the place is open and the general distaste French students seem to have for anyone they don't know. Well, all that changed last week when I discovered one vital piece of information: not all of the students eating at the RU are French.
On Thursday, I started chatting with two girls in my history class, ERASMUS students from Hungary and Italy. Outgoing and friendly, Lilla and Georgia seemed thrilled to meet other international students, and speaking French with them came easy. It was also more necessary with them than with anyone else since French was our only common language. We walked out to the RU together and while we got separated in the lunch line, we implicitly promised to try to eat lunch together on Thursdays from now on.
On Friday, a group of us inadvertently surrounded a Chinese exchange student. He handled it well though, and seemed relieved to be among chatty Americans.
In closing, I don't disparage the French students: this is their home turf. They have nothing to seek out. Most French students at the University of Nantes came with with other friends of theirs from high school. It's different from the States, where people tend to go their separate ways for college. That said, it's a relief to find a welcoming international community, finally...and to discover that I am a part of it!
TICKET SOON TO BECOME A STUB: TGV to Paris for Toussaint!
While some of my more cultivated friends left the opera house thoroughly nonplussed, I ended the night sleepy but entirely enraptured. We had gone to see Massenet's Manon based on Abbé Prévost's novel Manon Lescaut, which I actually read for a class last semester. And I thought taking a class on 17th and 18th century French would have no external validity! The opera had collapsed the complex plot into a relatively banal story of love lost and regained and ultimately lost again in the throes of consumptive death (do all operas end that way?!), but I got over that the moment the principal soprano opened her mouth. In spite of my poor view, I was totally taken in... and I snuck into the main orchestra seating area to get a better sense of the space, which was everything I had hope to find in our small opera house. While blue is, apparently, not the traditional opera house color and while the painting on the ceiling may not have been as impressive up close, the view from where I was standing transported me.
Feeling classier than ever, I reseated myself for the second act, whose penultimate mise en scene was terrifying and spectacular: a large tarnished mirror stood as the backdrop to a decadent scene of gambling and debauchery in which everyone dressed different shades of red, except for Manon and des Grieux (her lover), who wore black. It felt like hell, but in the best way. To commemorate the auspicious occasion, my friends and I all dressed as secretaries (accidentally) and took a photo on the steps at the end of the night.
Stub 2: Ryanair to Dublin (and AirCoach, too!)
As per the requests of my loving fans, I took a lot of pictures of myself in Dublin, so I'll preface this stub by saying: there are a lot of pictures, so I have made them small for spatial purposes (this is a long entry). Click to enlarge.
My Irish experience started before flight FR1987 even touched down in Dublin. Ryanair, the sketchiest airline in all of Europe, does not assign seats -- which was actually a good thing for me and my traveling companion Angela. Upon boarding the plane, we commenced our search for a pair of seats, and after a few refusals ("My husband is sitting there!") we finally espied pair of seats next to a small man most likely in his early to mid 40s.
"Personne n'est là?" I asked, addressing him in French. He shook his head no and we seated ourselves (nous nous sommes installées), only to discover shortly thereafter that our new companion was Irish, not French as we had originally suspected. After hearing us speak English, his initial attempt at contact constituted a mumbled joke about smoking on the plane. Coincidentally, just moments after his weak attempt at humor, an announcement came over the PA that the crew would be selling cigarettes that passengers could smoke on the plane and, indeed, to our astonishment, the flight attendants began walking up and down the aisles offering us "Smokeless Cigarettes." Our Irish companion was infinitely intrigued, and fueled by the ironic commentary taking place between me and Angela, he exclaimed, "A cigarette without smoke? Why, that's like a beer without alcohol, like a sandwich without..." and he couldn't finish his thought.
Moments later he ordered a beer. While waiting for his drink, our new friend started asking us more questions that we couldn't answer about the Smokeless Cigarettes, and finally stopped another flight attendant: "How do they work?" he asked. "They're just a burst of nicotine for nervous travelers," she replied. "But can you light them?" "I think so, I'm not sure." "How much are they?" "Would you like to buy a pack?" "No, no, I'm just curious." "They're 6 euro." "And how many to a pack?" "Ten, I think. Would you like to buy a pack." "No, no. This is just research. How much are they again?"
A few minutes later, the beer arrived. When given a choice between the two types available on the plane, our companion entered a state of absolute panic for about thirty seconds before saying, "Both! Both! I'll take them both." Our (apparently) tipsy friend finished both beers in the remaining hour of the flight. Toward the end, he invited us to see his band play on Monday, and we regretfully told him that we would be back in Nantes by then. He sighed, "I live in Nantes and I'm from Belfast. I don't know anyone in Dublin. I wish I had someone to invite." The last fifteen minutes of the flight passed in utter silence. After touching down, Angela and I got through immigration without a hitch and parted ways at the buses as she boarded her bus for Belfast and I mine to the heart of Dublin. I found I had to fight the urge to address people in French, which we later determined to be just a sign of my ascent to fluency -- I hope!
Dublin, it seems, is a city of nostalgia. Lynn (my oldest friend in the world) met me at the bus, and we passed the first night (Friday) catching up, and finding my other friends studying in Dublin: Erin (my first roommate at camp), Janna (one of my freshman year suitemates), and Thomas (an old friend from elementary school who moved to Dublin and is now a permanent student at Trinity). An ever growing and shrinking patchwork group, we formed quite the motley crew and tromped all over the entire city. Here is some of what they showed me:
"Personne n'est là?" I asked, addressing him in French. He shook his head no and we seated ourselves (nous nous sommes installées), only to discover shortly thereafter that our new companion was Irish, not French as we had originally suspected. After hearing us speak English, his initial attempt at contact constituted a mumbled joke about smoking on the plane. Coincidentally, just moments after his weak attempt at humor, an announcement came over the PA that the crew would be selling cigarettes that passengers could smoke on the plane and, indeed, to our astonishment, the flight attendants began walking up and down the aisles offering us "Smokeless Cigarettes." Our Irish companion was infinitely intrigued, and fueled by the ironic commentary taking place between me and Angela, he exclaimed, "A cigarette without smoke? Why, that's like a beer without alcohol, like a sandwich without..." and he couldn't finish his thought.
Moments later he ordered a beer. While waiting for his drink, our new friend started asking us more questions that we couldn't answer about the Smokeless Cigarettes, and finally stopped another flight attendant: "How do they work?" he asked. "They're just a burst of nicotine for nervous travelers," she replied. "But can you light them?" "I think so, I'm not sure." "How much are they?" "Would you like to buy a pack?" "No, no, I'm just curious." "They're 6 euro." "And how many to a pack?" "Ten, I think. Would you like to buy a pack." "No, no. This is just research. How much are they again?"
A few minutes later, the beer arrived. When given a choice between the two types available on the plane, our companion entered a state of absolute panic for about thirty seconds before saying, "Both! Both! I'll take them both." Our (apparently) tipsy friend finished both beers in the remaining hour of the flight. Toward the end, he invited us to see his band play on Monday, and we regretfully told him that we would be back in Nantes by then. He sighed, "I live in Nantes and I'm from Belfast. I don't know anyone in Dublin. I wish I had someone to invite." The last fifteen minutes of the flight passed in utter silence. After touching down, Angela and I got through immigration without a hitch and parted ways at the buses as she boarded her bus for Belfast and I mine to the heart of Dublin. I found I had to fight the urge to address people in French, which we later determined to be just a sign of my ascent to fluency -- I hope!
Dublin, it seems, is a city of nostalgia. Lynn (my oldest friend in the world) met me at the bus, and we passed the first night (Friday) catching up, and finding my other friends studying in Dublin: Erin (my first roommate at camp), Janna (one of my freshman year suitemates), and Thomas (an old friend from elementary school who moved to Dublin and is now a permanent student at Trinity). An ever growing and shrinking patchwork group, we formed quite the motley crew and tromped all over the entire city. Here is some of what they showed me:
Some very weird layout spacing is about to occur here. But, here are the first two stops from my whirlwind tour of Dublin on Saturday. To the left is the only picture I was allowed to take of the National Museum and to the right is Grafton Street, great for people watching, shopping, and generally pretending to be Irish. NB: The National Museum is chock full o' Irish art and history, including several petrified corpses or "Bog Men" -- relics of an ancient clan recently discovered in (surprise!) an Irish bog.
Above, please find evidence of the various theatrics that take place in Dublin. Also, Leprechauns exist!
Dublin is the perfect place to be a literature nerd. To the left, I've taken a moment out of my day to read a little Proust at the James Joyce center and to the right I've cracked open my copy of Joyce's Dubliners (which I bought at a fantastic used book store) in front of the James Joyce statue.
And what would a trip to Dublin be with out some culinary exploration? No? You're not with me on this one? Well, at any rate, to the left you will notice my extreme trepidation before diving into a plate of bangers and mash, but perhaps I'm just overwhelmed by the excitement in the pub mere hours before the start of the Ireland vs. Italy football match. To the right, note my pride after sampling my first "sip" of Guinness.
Sunday morning, we took yet another turn around the city before my departure, stopping first at Dublin Castle (to the left) and then taking a load off at St. Stephen's Green, which wasn't far from the AirCoach stop. Throughout the weekend, I felt like I was walking on air, not cobblestones and pavement. I was relieved. In Dublin, everyone understood me: the language barrier was basically non-existent, and I passed my time with friends who know me so well that I never have to explain myself to them. It was hard to leave, but there were, nevertheless, things to look forward to in Nantes.
Stub 3: Phoenix à La Carrière
And now we're about back up to date. Phew! Last night, my friend Christiana and I went to see the band Phoenix perform at La Carrière this huge venue out in the suburbs (les banlieues). At this point, Phoenix is pretty well-known in the states, and even though they sing in English, they are, first and foremost, a French indie group. They were on their home turf last night and it was astonishing.
I'd already been to a few smaller concerts around Nantes, and I'd fallen victim to the growing fear that French people never dance at concerts. It was all the more terrifying when, at La Carrière the entire enormous crowd stood stock still throughout the entire opening set. It was Chairlift. While French indie has reached the states, some American indie still clearly has yet to capture French audiences. After Chairlift's lukewarm reception, imagine my surprise at the crowd's roar when Phoenix finally came on -- punctually, might I add. France has no time for rock star theatrics: Chairlift started 10 minutes early and Phoenix came on promptly at 9:30. Swept up in the tidal wave of people, I hardly had to do anything to feel like I was dancing. The tightly packed crowd nudged me into unison with its swaying and jumping.
I'd never had more people ask me if I was British.
Stub 4: Tickets de Repas
Two days a week, I eat lunch at the University Restaurant (Restau-U or RU, pronounced: roo). I've written a fair amount about my frustrations with the atmosphere: the crush of students all trying to squeeze in a meal during the 1 1/2 hours the place is open and the general distaste French students seem to have for anyone they don't know. Well, all that changed last week when I discovered one vital piece of information: not all of the students eating at the RU are French.
On Thursday, I started chatting with two girls in my history class, ERASMUS students from Hungary and Italy. Outgoing and friendly, Lilla and Georgia seemed thrilled to meet other international students, and speaking French with them came easy. It was also more necessary with them than with anyone else since French was our only common language. We walked out to the RU together and while we got separated in the lunch line, we implicitly promised to try to eat lunch together on Thursdays from now on.
On Friday, a group of us inadvertently surrounded a Chinese exchange student. He handled it well though, and seemed relieved to be among chatty Americans.
In closing, I don't disparage the French students: this is their home turf. They have nothing to seek out. Most French students at the University of Nantes came with with other friends of theirs from high school. It's different from the States, where people tend to go their separate ways for college. That said, it's a relief to find a welcoming international community, finally...and to discover that I am a part of it!
TICKET SOON TO BECOME A STUB: TGV to Paris for Toussaint!
opera! dublin! friends! phoenix! new friends! paris!
ReplyDeletemmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm good entry :)
haha, you're the best. and see: life in france has it's ups and downs, but when it's good, it's SO good!
ReplyDeleteSTUB 1: Got most of the Opera story in an email
ReplyDeleteSTUB 2: I must say the dialogue between your traveling "companion" and the stewardess made me laugh out loud. Dublin looks like it was great fun, but where are photos of Lynn, Erin & Thomas? If I were them I would protest!
STUB 3: Pip, pip, tallyho -- whatever
STUB 4: Something to bear in mind when you return to HC -- a little more interest in the French students who come here to study would certainly be appreciated by them!
SOON TO BE STUB: Toussaint -- all saints? This isn't the French version of spring break in Cancun, is it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m68ttHNv-Qo&NR=1
xoxo.
Mom
Dear mom,
ReplyDeleteThat video is ridiculous.
Love,
Thea
Even though I spoke English regularly with certain people abroad, I always defaulted to French with strangers, so while I never accidentally addressed my family in French, I would CONSTANTLY fight the urge to say "pardon," and I still find myself formulating questions in French when I'm going to talk to a professor or sales clerk.
ReplyDeleteI'M SO JEALOUS YOU SAW PHOENIX IN FRANCE