Part two of my epic journey through France saw me in Tours, the city where Viviana studied last summer, situated in the Loire Valley (aka the hot spot for chateaux). This part of my trip started off really well. And by that, I mean that they had technical difficulties on the Paris Metro and I missed my train. However, an extremely friendly worker in the train station (SURPRISE! They DO exist!) informed me that my train ticket was valuable for several days as long as I got on a "blue" train, the next one of which was leaving in an hour. Thus, tragedy turned into a discovery on how to get half off train tickets in France. Let me also take this moment to say that I LOVE it when French people say "je vous en prie" to me. Maybe it's just the people I've talked to, but they always sound so happy when they say it. It's like that time that I realized in Japan that "I'm sorry" sounds horrible in comparison with "sumimasen".
Next came my train journey, which was surprisingly pleasant...the second class on Intercité trains in France (at least the ones I took) are those compartment things rather than just aisles with chairs, so I felt like I was on the Hogwarts Express. I then arrived in the beautiful Tours train station and met Marie, my guide for the next two days. Marie had met Viviana when she was there last summer, and offered to show me around/let me stay at her place while I was in the area. She is, without a doubt, the most competent and friendly 19-year-old I have ever met. We chatted quite a bit, mostly about differences between French and American schooling, because she is applying to 13 (THIRTEEN!!) American universities as a transfer student to do her last two years of higher education. This all happened in French, though considering that she went to a bilingual school, I'm 99.9% sure that her English is miles better than my French. But it was still kind of an ego massage that we never needed to switch over, so I guess that was alright.
After showing me around Tours a little bit, we went to her father's house for the night. We made a lovely dinner of spaghetti and a cake, as Marie evidently loves making desserts. We then trundled off to see a French movie with her mom, who's hilarious and wonderful. I did not understand everything that happened in the movie, but it was a good time nonetheless. And that was that for Wednesday.
Thursday started off great, with my first real experience thus far with French tv. I watched part of a show that seemed to be about high schoolers at a boarding school who wanted to be in a band, then switched over to the Olympics and watched some skiing! They were just switching to speed skating when Marie's mom came over and took us to her house for a little R&R, including a quiche lunch and another French movie called OSS 117 (it's a James Bond spoof, and a pretty good one at that...reminded me of the old Pink Panther movies a little bit).
We then set off for my first chateau viewing, a place called Chenonceau that is literally in the middle of a river. It's gorgeous, and apparently would be even more so in the summer, as none of the flowers were blooming. Still, it was a nice day and it was fun to check out the castle, with me and Marie clustered around Marie's mom listening to her reading to us from the visitor's guide. Regardless of the fact that Marie and her family have to do this every time someone comes to visit them, they certainly acted as if they were having a good time, and I personally enjoyed the hell out of myself. Regardless of how cold/icky chateaux were back in the day, I still want to live in one, damn it!
We then returned home to Marie's dad's house, where we chilled and watched a little more of the Olympics before going out to dinner. For the first time since I came to France, I couldn't finish what was on my plate (ravioli, mmmmmmmm). Then we went back to the house and Marie showed me French comedy routines on DVD; one was a woman, Florence Foresti, doing stand-up, and the other was something called Un Gars/Une Fille, which centered around the world travels of a fictitious couple (but fictitious in the way that Job and whatever Amy Phoeler's character were fictitiously together on Arrested Development...they're really a couple in real life). I think this about says it all for Florence Foresti: http://www.florenceforesti.com/
In short: she's hilarious, at least what I understood of what she did. Un Gars/Une Fille was kind of like watching a French Michael Scott and his female counterpart touring the world...aka pretty funny. And on this note of French humor, part two of my journey came to a close.
No comments:
Post a Comment