This weekend was the weekend trip with the Syracuse group. This semester it was different however--we went around Nancy, Verdun, and Reims (all around the Champagne region). Different trip from the Burgundy trip last semester but still had its own perks.
Friday afternoon we arrived in Nancy and of course got a walking tour of Nancy. My tour was all in french which was not the problem (the problem was my attention span that disappeared after 10-15 minutes). It was a good way to definitely get to see most of Nancy...which is pretty tiny and actually a pretty young town according to european standards. It's funny because on the walking tour I saw styles of houses or just little signs/things on the road that I thought..."only in france would one see this" then we would go to the main roads of Nancy and see a Lacoste store and tons of banks, pieces of Art Nouveau on buildings....it was interesting...but very small. That night we had dinner in our hotel and then I went out in the town to see the main square at night which was really pretty. The main square during the day is just as pretty--plated with gold, les fleurs de lis, fountains, statues, french architecture...very regally french.
Saturday we got up early to go to Verdun, one of the major battles of World War I. We went to the site of an Osuary (french word for "bone" = un os) hence the name osuary. In and under the building are bones of soldiers which they found while they were cleaning up this certain site. The bones are not just from french soldiers, but from everyone who died on that field. It is really quite amazing how the bones just have not decomposed at all. To see the bones you have to go outside and look through a window underneath the main floor to see them, it's not like you walk in and that's the first thing you see...there is parafinalia and of course a theatre for an oh-so-educational war museum film. Around the Osuary were cemeteries for the soldiers, and then we got to walk around the site a bit. It was amazing/scary to see how the land around there is still screwed up from all the shells that blew up during that battle. It was scary because we were told to stay on the path...it was very possible that there were still shells there that had not yet exploded...needless to say not even the goofiest goofs tried to go into those holes. After that we got back onto the bus to and headed over to Reims. Of course, we engaged on another excursion into a cathedral in Europe with an audio guided tour. The best part of that cathedral was the stained glass in all of the windows...very pretty. Whether it was classical colorful stained glass or just white glass artwork, it helped me forget that I could see my breath while breathing in that cathedral.
Of course, being in the Champagne region of France it would be an abolute utter disgrace if we did not get to do a champagne tasting! So our director scheduled the champagne tasting for Sunday morning. We went to the caves of the Taittinger family...very very good champagne and very cool caves. For champagne, it's the chalk in the soil that makes the difference. It was cool because I noted how the walls in the under ground caves (12, 16, and 18 meters underground) would be perfect for wall climbing...and then someone was like, but then your hands would be full of chalk! But that's why it would be perfect...the chalk would dry your hands so you wouldn't need to carry it on your harness! Anyways, I thought it would have been inappropriate if I had tried to scale the chalk walled caves that were actually dug out initially by the ancient Romans, so they're pretty old. We learned the process of making champagne which was acutally what I thought was a really cool process...and of course at the end we got to taste the champagne which was well, french champagne from the champagne region.
All in all a great weekend. The visit to Verdun was very sombering...but interesting to be in a place where the War actually happened. I saw a couple films last semester about the first world war, and learned about it in my history class last semester...so to be there and see physical evidence of shells and craters etc. just made everything more real to me. I had a good weekend though. Learned how champagne was made, got to talk to people who I haven't really gotten to talk to a lot this semester. Saturday I spent a couple minutes in the red wine aisle of a "hyper-marché" (like France's versions of a super target) trying to pick a good bottle for me and my friends to split. I ended up buying a 2004 Côtes du Rhones (my favorite red wine)--I thought that would make my dad proud hahaha.
Anyways, coming up--only 6 more whole weeks left here...exciting but scary at the same time. No french university classes this week due to the NATO summit that is coming here and will be Friday and Saturday. OH COOL! No, not really...the city is going to be chaos and they have blocked off certain regions of Centre Ville to the point where only people who live there and have a special permit can get into those zones...and Strasbourg is going to practically close down later this week. Their goal of shutting down the university is to try and get students away from Strasbourg...in the hopes that they won't protest if they don't have school (a lot of the french are against France being with/cooperating with NATO). Of course, Syracuse courses still go on and as I just made a list of what I have to do for this week, I won't have as much free time as I thought. But that's ok.
Next weekend: Paris, again but this time with my art history class. Naturally, several museums in one weekend...so obviously more to come. Love you and miss you all. Be home soon. Scary.
No comments:
Post a Comment