Shallow Pockets Brimming with Snails & Puppydog Tails

Strasbourg was vastly, vastly different from Paris. The moment we emerged from our train there was a sense of calm and reassurance that washed over me. This city was much more my style. Much more comfortable and lived in. Kind of the thrift-store-sister of the capital. With a much more eclectic array of building styles and street fashion [sorry, but Parisian fashion is timid and boring. I much preferred the colors and textures of the bicycling Strasbourgians].

 Bikes on bikes on bikes outside of the train station. I knew I was going to like this city.

 

First Barca and now Strasbourg? Most Americans couldn't care less about the NBA, so why are the Lakers all over Europe?

All of the buttons and manuals were in French so dad couldn't figure out the basics on the rental, haha.

My favorite hotel of this trip lay on the sleepy little street above. It was absolute perfection, from our cathedral-view to the intricate vintage details of the staircase to the fact that I had my OWN ROOM away from my father's snoring! I could have stayed here the whole trip!

 

[The hours of walking in the rain in Paris morphed my little cold into a full blown monster so forgive the pale sickliness of the pictures until Heidelberg.]

 When in France... SNAILS. I actually really like escargot. Whenever butter is the main ingredient my taste buds are almost certainly won over. Daddy was excited by how big his pizza was [portions in Europe just aren't what they are back home].

Europeans are so liberal with dogs! They ride on the subway, accompany you into clothing boutiques and even wander around restaurants while you're munching. Could you imagine if someone tried to let their dog, and an unleashed one at that!, join them at Kyma? We'd be shut down faster than you can say Pano.

Je t'aime belle Strasbourg...

Shallow Pockets Brimming with Bridge Scaling

Paris is a pretty big city, especially when you're walking it. After the Arc we tried to decide which sites we really wanted to make it to. I had been hoping to see the Louvre but you really have to dedicate more than an afternoon to it, so we decided to journey towards Notre Dame. And I really wanted to see the islands! I never made it there last time.

If I ever make it back to Paris my trip will revolve around the Louvre and only the Louvre.

When I came across this bridge last Spring Break I didn't know the meaning behind the locks. I found an article a few months later explaining that lovers decorate a lock, attach it to the chain link, and toss the key into la Seine as an illustration of their forever-love. Seeing as how it was my parents' 25th anniversary it seemed only fitting they have a lock of their own [cue 'aww's]. There are vendors all along the river and most of them sell little locks, so we found a vendor and my mama borrowed a Sharpie [my dad has typical left hand scrawl so mam's penmanship was the obvious choice].

 

Now here's where the humor of this touching little story comes in. The vendor was a few blocks down the river and my mama's heeled boots were aching her feet so deal was- mom writes the names, dad goes back and locks the lock to the bridge, and then we bring the keys back for mama to toss into the river. So, daddy finds a spot on the bridge [nice choice, no?] and we walk back to mom and cross another bridge. She poses for a picture of her dropping the keys in and, when she lets go, she drops them straight down... not into the water but onto an overhang on the bridge about two feet down!! My poor mama feels so bad about this that my dad actually scales the bridge to retrieve the key and hand it back to my mom for a proper throw.
If that's not love, what is?? <3

We did finally make it to Notre Dame but tours were closing in an hour and the line was INFINITE. Also, they only let twenty people in at a time... so we settled on outside-pictures and drinking wine at a cafe in view of Notre Dame. Basically the same thing, right?

 

Charlemagne and the Dame.

We didn't linger long in Paris the next day. While our hotel was lovely and the city was beautiful... it just wasn't the city for us. Parisians don't exactly go out of their way to make you feel welcomed, or even tolerated, do they? So we headed to Strasbourg and crossed our fingers that there might be more German than French influences there!

Shallow Pockets Brimming with Merm ern Derdd

I apologize for how belated this post is- so many pictures, so little time to resize and organize. To catch up, a few weeks back, something truly wonderful happened. My parents got on a plane and came to Europe. And they let me tag along!

Unfortunately, since I'm being an adult and working in a grown up role, I wasn't able to join them until their second week. But as soon as the weekend started I jetted off to Paris to meet them.

The logistics of getting from point A [Charles de Galle] to point B [our hotel] were complicated to say the least. I seem to have very little luck when navigating. You would think that for as much traveling as I've been doing, I would have remedied this by now and turned bad luck into practice makes perfect. Well folks, sometimes there are just extenuating circumstances. And sometimes the universe just really has a blast fucking with you. I think most of my life has involved the latter.

SO. My parents were flying from Dublin, whereas I came from Manchester, so the plan was to meet one another at the hotel room. I had hours to get there before them, so I was envisioning a quick suitcase drop-off followed by some solo exploring. But Paris had other plans for me.

• Charles de Galle was under construction, and the train that usually takes you within Metro usage wasn't available. After much miscommunication and dead ends, I finally found the bus to take me to another train station. As I walked outside, it started pouring. Optimistically, as I was finally leaving the rainiest country in the world, I neglected to pack a rain coat or umbrella...
• Once we got to the train station they ushered us onto a platform. We missed the train by seconds and got to sit in the rain watching it pull away. The next train was said to be arriving in 20 minutes. Then that train was delayed another 20. When it did finally come it arrived at a different platform so all of us ran to catch it. We smushed onto the train like sardines, standing room only with suitcases mind you. We sat at the platform for another 20 minutes. It was an older model, so there was no air conditioning on the coach. Brilliant.
• Since there was so much body heat inside and so much cold rain outside the windows steamed up on both sides so it was impossible to read any of the station stops and the intercom was impossible to decipher. Luckily a nice Parisian boy started chatting to me and he allowed me to watch the train route via his iPhone. Once we reached what my Parisian friend [let's call him Pierre] deemed an appropriate stop, we got off and kind Pierre walked me through the station to the Metro and pointed me to the line I needed. God bless you, Pierre!
• The Metro was about as packed as the train had been, but at least it was direct and there was no waiting. I got off at the Arc de Triumphe, because I knew our hotel was somewhat nearby, and emerged from underground into the pounding rain. It was dark at this time too, mind you. I desperately tried to spot a cab and found an exit in the massive roundabout that seemed to have waves of cabs pass by, so I stood on a corner and tried to recall all of my high school French.
• I didn't have any Euros on me, and the first cab I hailed didn't take card. So I walked six or so blocks down the Champs Elysee until I found a cash machine, withdrew, and walked back up to my corner. By this time I think it was safe to say that I was pretty damn wet. I managed to hail another taxi, placed my suitcase in the car and read the address to the driver. Do you KNOW what he said to me?? "No, not dressed like that. Sorry. Get out."
  I was utterly gobsmacked. Sincerely. Gob. Smacked.
• So I immediately decide all Parisians are FUCKING ASSHOLES and stubbornly walked my ass back down the Champs Elysee even though I had neither a map nor the faintest idea where our hotel was. After about twenty minutes of walking unprotected through the rain lugging a suitcase I realized how truly silly that was and found the first hotel I could to ask the concierge for directions. Their job is to be friendly, right? And they probably speak English? The first guy told me, miracle of all miracles, that I was in fact on the correct street and my hotel was two block down the road on the left. Yippee!
• Untold blocks later... still no hotel. So I walked back and asked the doorman at the hotel across the street from the first. And this lovely man made me scold myself for the "all Parisians are assholes" cursing I had done previously because this man was a saint. He provided me a map and kind words and brief shelter from the storm. 

And so I made it to our hotel at long last around midnight and collapsed in a heap, first in a bubble bath [YES! BATH!] and then under the down comforter of my little bed. And there I slept my sick, cold, wet body until the dawn.

My parents and I had a lovely reunion and, as you are probably sick of so much text and reading, I will simply illustrate the first few hours of our day in gay Paris with pictures of our tour of the Arc de Triumphe.

Mama and Daddy and the Arc!

So last March when I saw the Arc for the first time, I didn't realize you could go under it to reach it. See, the Arc is surrounded by the most mammoth traffic circle I have ever, ever seen and, when I saw people walking around underneath the structure I assumed they were all jay walkers with a death wish. Well apparently there's a tunnel... Found it!

 

Check out this cool guy posing casually in front of what he likes to refer to as the "champs Elyse" [pronounced with the clearest American phonetics, of course].

We bought tickets [well actually, I was free! Thank you EU residency] to travel to the tippy top of the Arc. See those windy tubes that resemble DNA on either leg of the Arc? Those are stairs. And lots of them. Mama and her heels had to take a break partway up, so my dad and I pointed and laughed, as you do to someone you love. <3

You can kind of make out the Eiffel Tower just over Daddy's shoulder. It truly was a phenomenal view.

Shallow Pockets Brimming with Hourglass Sand

 And so today marks two months until America. Eight weeks. What an insignificantly small digit that is. 8. It's the first milestone that's been a real smack in the face about how quickly time has passed here.

 
This month has been a big change in regards to my perception of this life. I referred to my flat as "home". Macclesfield. Home. Who would have thought?

I've also grown very attached to a few of my England friends. People that have become part of my life. People whose absence will create a void when I pack up and leave.
Thank god for Whatsapp. Thank god for Skype. But, just as it hasn't been a substitute for my friends in the States, it won't be a substitute for these friends either.

It's been easy to dwell on the aspects of this adventure that have strayed from my anticipations and idealizations. To see what's wrong more so than what's good. But with so little time left it really does open your eyes to the things that won't leave with you. And the people.

I recently finished a book called "Siddhartha" recommended to me by my brilliant, wise-beyond-her-years yogi friend, Julia. There was a portion that really opened my mind:

"Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it."

Living. And learning. In Macclesfield.

Shallow Pockets Brimming with Ich Bin Schweden

Sunday was more touristing in Sveeden. We headed out to see the Big Ship Museum- aka Vasamuseet. Basically the entire museum focused on the 16th century ship, the Vasa. This baby was painfully hand-crafted, manned by hundreds, and it sank within two hours of its maiden voyage right in Stockholm's harbor- oops! Essentially, the Vasa was an utter and complete failure. So what do you do with that? Monumentalize it into a museum of shoulda, woulda, coulda, apparently, and pay back the restoration by charging admission. Sneaky, Sweden, very sneaky.

I really did like the way they had everything set up though. It was a 'pretty' museum at the very least and it was very cool getting to walk around the restoration rooms. Some of it may have been a bit... unnecessary? Space fillers and all that, but it was a nice way to spend an afternoon. It's all enrichment, right? What a cool profession though to get to design a museum of that magnitude. It was more ID than archaeology- I can dig it. We wandered around Stockholm a bit more and then headed off to a friend of a friend's for supper.

For dinner I had the opportunity to try a Swedish delicacy- Surströmming. Essentially what it is is... fermented herring. Canned. Over salted. Left to sit for a year or more. You can't eat it indoors, the smell is that horrendously overbearing, but, like I said, Swedes like being outside so it doesn't seem to be much of a problem. After collecting all of the goodies for our feast from Heiko's, we headed down to the docks, bungeed a tarp as a wind barrier, bundled up, and got adventurous.

Our wonderfully generous host showed us how to prep the Surstromming: cut it up into tiny pieces, mash up some taters, add a bit of red onion, set it on cracker-bread and voila- one smelly sandy coming right up! It was not as awful as I imagined it might be... but it's also not something I would seek out again. I ate my half a sandwich but stuck to crayfish, cheese, and conversation for the rest of the evening.

On the last day we made our way to the markets so I could get my mama her smelly farmer's cheese and Dennis got moose salami. That's right- MOOSE. We got a kick out of all the little signs in the butcher's window. Not sure what's in your meat? Just match up the animal sillhouettes! Genius! Then we each grabbed a lunch of Sweedish meatballs in the most lovely creamy gravy, mashed potatoes, steamed veggies and lingonberry sauce. It was definitely a massive step up from Surstromming.