P U

I am stunned to announce that I have finally finished the stick of deodorant that I brought over with me in January. Ha. I'm not sure that you will find this as amazing as I do, but it brought to mind a very interesting observation of American females living in France. I know 2 other American females living in France and all 3 of us had to get deodorant brought over from the US. Now sure, this might just be a case of us being picky about our brand preferences, and make no mistake, the French (contrary to some false stereotypes) do use deodorant and sell it at the supermarket, the problem is that these deodorants are very different than the ones we are used to.
The most noticeable difference is that aerosol deodorant is much more popular here. So while there are lots of choices, there are very few solid deodorant options. I can't say I know one American female that uses aerosol. Also, there is some very strange marketing on the deodorants here. One of them distinctly says, "48-hour use". Ok, to dispel a very common French stereotype, most people here do shower every day. But, if this is truly the case, then why the need for a 48-hour deodorant? While I'm confident in the composition of the ingredients that make this long-lasting deodorant, it does, in fact, scare me that this would be a luring marketing ploy. Thankfully, I have a backup ready and waiting in the wings and since the first one lasted me...oh 6 1/2 months and I have less than 5 months left, I think I'm good. So fresh and so clean clean!

Joue de Basket

To get out of the house and actually do something somewhat good for me, I went and played basketball with my two roommates and a French friend of ours. There ended up being 3 French and 3 Americans, but we didn't play 3 on 3 that way because there were 4 guys and 2 girls. To start off the evening we first taught the Frenchmen some HORSE and PIG action. I asked if they played Cheval and Cochon, but they looked at me like I was crazy, so I'm going to assume not. We played horse and pig instead. Then came the actual 3 on 3 game and there are some observations I took away from the night:
1. I'm WAY out of basketball shape. Now, don't let me confuse you, I'm not in any kind of shape except amazing wine drinking and bread and cheese consuming shape, but jogging and doing some sit ups here and there is nothing like playing a 3 on 3 game of basketball. I sit writing this blog about an hour and a half after I have finished playing and I'm already sore. I hope I can get out of bed in the morning...but if I can't? oh well, I have nothing to do anyway :-) I have time to recover.
2. People play basketball just like their personalities. I can't elaborate on that further, but I could have a full conversation on the point if you'd like to engage me more at a later date.
3. I can say the simple phrases necessary in a basketball game like...good job, good play, my fault, what's the score?, what happened, jeez, I'm tired, anyone have some water? and oh god I am going to die...in French, but I cannot for the life of me speak another language in the middle of playing a game of basketball. I'm just not talented enough to multi-task like that and my brain simply doesn't work fast enough to make the phrases come out properly. I'll work on that.

Alright, I'm gonna hit the showers, which are unfortunately up a steep flight of stairs...man I'm old. :-)

The Tour!

The past approximately two weeks that I have been house-sitting have also been spent follow the Tour de France. I thought about trying to go see part of the tour in person, but the closest it got to us was 2 1/2hrs north and essentially, I would have had to take a train to a place to watch the riders go by....and that would be it. I thought about trying to go to a town where the finish line for that day's stage would be, but as you can imagine, it is kind of a big deal and I came late to the party. Alas, I watched each day on tv and got way too involved.
I got to watch the crazy fans on the side of the roads dressed up in strange costumes and sometimes not dressed at all. I constantly wondered if it makes the riders nervous when there are so many people who can literally just reach out and touch them because they are so close to the route. I marveled at the amazing views of castles, countrysides and cozy little towns captured by the many cameras covering the race. I laughed at the goats who decided they wanted to take part in the race and ran alongside the riders in stage 17. I cringed when then-leader Andy Schleck's chain got messed up during his attempt to break away, letting Alberto Contador take the lead in a highly-discussed move of supposedly bad sportsmanship. I was stunned by the sheer dominance of Mark Cavendish and his seemingly ease in sprinting past the other riders. I contemplated the safeness in riding a bike while also drinking a glass of champagne, as Contador did during the final stage on the way to Paris. I frantically searched the internet for the explanation as to why team RadioShack had to change their jerseys for the final stage when really I thought the black ones were way cooler looking than the red ones (apparently you can't change jerseys, it's the rules.) All in all, I immersed myself vicariously in one of the national events of France, and enjoyed a bicycle race as much as possible with respect for the competition and culture that it showcases.

Birds

My apologies to anyone who reads this that owns birds, but maybe you'll be the perfect person to tell me why people, do, in fact, own birds. Part of my house-sitting duties include making sure Sonny and Cher, the two birds owned by the family, have food and water. (No, I don't know what kind of birds they are, but thanks for asking. They are normal bird size, yellow all over with some orange on their necks and heads. I hope that helps.) I'm already detecting a negative undertone to this blog post and I do apologize, but it may be because I have for the 4th time in a week and a half, had to pick up their feeders from the floor. Let me explain. Their feeders sit on the side of their cage and are filled with little tiny pellets of bird food. The first time I noticed one of them on the floor, I thought, "oh shoot, it fell and now their food is all over the floor. That's a bummer." The second time they fell I thought it was a bit weird. The third time both of them fell off and I started to wonder (that was yesterday) and then today I came in and they were both on the floor again and I'm convinced they are doing it on purpose. In the meantime, not only wasting a good bit of bird food, but also making me get out the vacuum each time to sweep up the bird food on the floor. Not cool. Now, I'm not a rocket scientist, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I did determine a lovely way to keep the feeders from falling anymore, either inadvertantly or on purpose; enter twisty ties. Magic.

Aside from this strange knocking down of feeders, these birds also like to talk to me when I'm talking to other people on skype. I complained about it one day to my mom and she told me I complain about birds more than anyone else she knows. I kindly explained that birds chirping sweetly outside my window in the morning is one thing. High-pitched screeching while I'm chillin on the couch is quite another. I'm just sayin.

Thirdly, these birds do some really weird things. I was in the kitchen today and my roommate who was over for a visit yelled into me that she thought one of the birds had just died. I didn't exactly drop everything and come running, but I sauntered over and asked why she'd say that. The bird literally just takes a leap off the top rung and falls all the way to the bottom of the cage. I don't know why, I guess living in a cage needs some livening up a bit sometimes. They do other weird stuff as well like flap their wings violently while sitting in one place, really just making it look like they are booty-dancing or something and they climb all over the place using their beaks for leverage. I'm not sure, I don't get it, but I guess that's the life of a caged bird.

TV!

I have been at the house for a little over a week by myself and have spent a little time in front of the tv. Now, to be expected, the majority of the channels are in French, but there are a few channels that remind me of channel surfing at home. Mainly they consist of CNN, CNBC and E! Entertainment Network. As much as I like the news, there is only so much CNN I can take sometimes. CNBC is all just really boring to me, so that leaves E! as the fall back. I have to say that I haven't watched a lot of tv. Mainly I have been watching movies because the rest of French tv is just like tv at home. A whole lotta channels with not that much actually on. They do have channels based around cuisine, national geographic, home channel and then they have 3 National tv networks that really just share rights to everything. They are France 2, 3, & 4. These channels have the local news and compare pretty well to our national stations at home. They sometimes even show American tv series in English just with French subtitles. Sadly I only get 2 sports channels. Right now the Tour de France is on one of them during the day, but other than that the sports here consist of random rugby re-airings, under 19 world championships of soccer for both women and men, equestrian competitions and triathalons. Not exactly my constant dosage of sports that I'm used to at home, but it'll do for now. I'm hoping watching more tv in French all the time will help my comprehension...we'll see.
One of the most interesting differences between tv here and tv at home is that every time there is going to be commercials on, the tv station has to announce that publicity is following. It definitely takes some getting used to because I'll be watching a show and then all of a sudden there is a screen that says "PUB" on it. Thus, commercials to follow. Not sure why they need to announce it, I guess it is so we don't get confused that the commercials are entertainment.

Relief!

Today is finally the day. I have been applying for internships since February and today I officially took one! I will be working at Michelin, which is in the same town where I live right now. My actual job responsibilities are somewhat vague at this point, but lets just say that I have a lot of work ahead of me. Essentially my position entails the analysis of all the fleet contracts that Michelin has to assess whether they are in accordance with the current guidelines. Sounds enthralling huh? There are multiple up-sides though, beginning of course with the fact that I will, in fact, have experience with a very successful international company. I had been looking for marketing positions, and this isn't exactly that, but it does give me some experience in a different sector of business, which I'm sure will prove to be quite insightful. Finally, the internship fits into the time frame that I required, which means I'll be flying home on December 15! Sadly I don't start until Aug 23 due to the nation-wide vacation that happens in August, so I have...count 'em...5 WEEKS with nothing to do. Normally this would be great fun, problem is that traveling in Europe in the summer isn't exactly cheap, so....I'm dog-sitting and trying to figure out what to do with all this time.

OVEN!

Now that I have an oven for about a month, I have decided to diversify my dinner menus while I can. The first meal made in the oven was Eggplant Parmesan. Eggplant is definitely in season right now and all the stores have them. Some stores even have white eggplant. Not too sure about that development as I have never seen white eggplant before, so we just stuck to the regular stuff. We didn't fry the eggplant slices like most recipes call for, but we dipped them in egg, breaded them and baked them instead. Yummy chips was what they ended up being, well the ones that didn't make the casserole anyway. The recipe called for just eggplant with cheese and sauce layers, but we went ahead and veggied the casserole up a bit with onions, mushrooms and zucchini as well. It reminded me more of ratatouille without all the soupiness and with cheese. The meal started off with a flavor-packed salad and was accompanied by some garlic toast. We ended up with an absolutely delicious meal that we could enjoy on the deck! Ah, many more oven creations to come...

La Fête Nationale

July 14 is France's National Celebration. They don't call it Independence Day, or even Bastille Day (which is what we were always taught in school), it is just a plain old National Celebration. The Bastille (which was a medieval fortress and prison in the center of Paris) represented royal authority in France back in the late 1700s. On this day, the lower classes essentially got fed up with Louis XVI and his high taxes that were implemented to try and recover from an economic crisis. To show their distaste, they stormed the Bastille and freed the SEVEN prisoners that were in the Bastille. Not exactly opening up Alcatraz, but the event was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern nation and became an icon of the French Republic during the French Revolution.
There of course is much more to the story, but all you really need to know now is that it is a day when the French get off work (yay for a Wednesday off!...er, if I were working) and close stores at weird hours (the grocery store is open from 9:45-13:30). I'm not sure if there are any foods we are specifically supposed to eat today, but I'll celebrate with a glass of wine, some cheese and a baguette. That should suffice.

New Responsibility

I have a new responsibility and it is a cute 13-year-old terrier named August. As I don't have much going on here in Clermont lately besides hanging out and watching movies and trying not to sweat too much, I agreed to house/dog-sit for a family who is headed back to the States for a month. So, I now am living in a 4-bedroom spacious house with an OVEN, a dishwasher, a washer & dryer, internet all the time, a tv, a huge collection of dvds and even a bunch of books in English. Quite the drastic changes from the past 7 months of life. Of course I also have a little dog to keep me company at all times, which is good because even though there is no one here, I don't want to think I'm talking to (or drinking by) myself! I also forgot to mention that I have a car that I can drive as well.
It is really weird being out in the "suburbs" of Clermont and to know that I have lived in this place for almost 7 months and had no idea that this part of the city existed. The only thing that would make this a little better would be some good old Air Conditioning. Alright, alright, that'd be getting a little greedy :-)

Men's Fashion

This post has been festering for a very long time. I have finally decided that this is the right time to write it, as the appearance of mansacs and capris has increased rapidly with the change in temperatures.
These two aspects of men's fashion in Europe would simply not fly back in the US. They just aren't really acceptable. I'm not sure what that is so much, sure it probably has something to do with European men being much more in-tune with their feminine sides or something of the sort. Sadly, the appearance of mansacs and capris still baffles us Americans when we see these fashion features appearing around us in bars and on the street.
Why exactly is it necessary for men to carry "purses" here? Sure they won't call them purses, but let's call the sky blue when it is blue. My roommate keeps wondering out loud what really could be in their mansac. I, of course, argue that they carry in their mansacs the same things we (women) carry in our purses. You know, phone, wallet, keys, kleenex, chapstick, etc etc... My roommate doesn't buy it. She demands that they only need to carry their wallet (back pocket), phone (front pocket) and keys (other front pocket). Having not carried a purse for the better part of my life, this can be quite weighty on the pockets and then you have to rearrange things from digging into one's thigh when you sit down. (I'm just sayin)
Really I think the difference here is that they don't wear cargo anything. Guys at home wear more cargo shorts or cargo pants so they have more room to store things without mansacs. Also, the identification cards here are much bigger than in the US, leading to bigger wallets. Random right? But true piece of random trivia. I tried to find the dimensions, but google isn't helping me out, so you'll just have to take my word for it.
I can't defend the capris really though. I mean sure I ask myself why I wear capris more than shorts, but mostly it is because I hate the way shorts are made for women. Most of them are too short for me. So, I resort to wearing capris. For guys? Sure, there are some men who wear short shorts, but usually they are made to hit more at the top of the knee, so why capris are necessary I don't really understand. Maybe everyone just wants to channel their inner Rafa Nadal. (don't know? .... he's a tennis player from Spain who wears capris a lot)
One thing I know for sure is that these men's fashion elements are not going away, so I might as well stop wondering. But I could start wondering if these trends will ever make it to the States...

4th of July

I have been away from home numerous times on the 4th of July, but in the past I have usually at least been in the USA. This year, not so much. To honor our country that we are currently not inhabiting, we decided a cook-out was indeed the best option. Well, ok really it was one of our only options because as the 4th was on a Sunday, there isn't much else open. We started throwing the idea of getting the remaining Americans together and making traditional American food. One major problem arose though: we needed a grill to celebrate the 4th of July somewhat properly. Thankfully our landlords had a gas grill, so we decided to have everyone (3 other people) over for burgers and hot dogs...I mean brats...I mean sausages that somewhat resemble brats... that we put in hot dog buns. Right.
To compliment these burgers and brats I made potato salad and we had a big ole bowl of the freshest fruits from this summer. Thankfully one thing the French don't lack is fresh fruits and produce. We even had one of the girls coming over make brownies because she has a real-life and functioning oven. Such novelty.
In general it was a great day. It was sunny, the beer was semi-cold (which is pretty normal here anyway), the burgers and brats...er, sausages...were yummy and the brownies were amazing, mostly because I hadn't eaten one in about 7 months. We didn't have any fireworks, but we're expecting some on the 14th because that is when the French celebrate Bastille Day, commemorating the storming of the prison and seen as the symbol of the uprising of the French leading to the French Revolution and eventually their freedom from Louis XVI.
- Interesting note, I jokingly asked one of the French students on Sunday what he was doing to celebrate American independence day. He replied that he wasn't quite sure because he didn't know it was American Independence Day. I gave him a hard time because I knew when the French celebrate their nation. Sure, you can say I know that because I live in France, but he lived in the States....soooo...but, truth be told, I couldn't tell you when Germans celebrate their independence (have they ever had to declare it? ah jeez, really I did take AP European History at one point in my life) or when other major countries have their festivals, so I guess he's off the hook.
UPDATE: I wikipediaed German Independence day and they don't have one because they were never under colonial rule, but they do have unity day on Oct 3 which celebrates the reunification of Germany on the same date in 1990. Uh huh, I knew that.

Brussels

As mentioned before, the guide books sure do love this city. Possibly because it is the heart of the European Union or because it really does have tons of museums, but it wasn’t my favorite place on the trip. Here are my thoughts anyway:
- The main attraction of this town is a little boy statue peeing. If that doesn’t tell you there isn’t much to do, I don’t know what does.
- I have to thank my former company for sending me all over the USA to work so that I was able to build up some serious hotel points. I used a free night in Brussels to stay at the Hilton and after 15 euro a night hostels it was well welcomed. In fact, we didn’t leave our hotel in the morning til 11:30 am. I know, I know, for being in a foreign city we should have been more explorative. Nope, sorry, sleep rules.
- Sadly there were grandstands set up in the Brussels main square for some kind of jousting competition. I don’t know, we didn’t stay to watch, but it was sad because the buildings are so intricate and beautiful and I didn’t really get a good view of them or any good pictures.
- Another big attraction in Brussels is Atomium. It was built for the World Fair in like 1958 and some liken it to the Eiffel Tower because it really is just a big structure to look at. Here’s the problem though, 1. I had never even heard of it until I saw it on the map, and 2. The name is really hard for me to say, so I just kept calling it the Atrium. It looks nothing like an Atrium, but that’s what I called it anyway.
- We did go to one museum while we were in Brussels and it was the Musical Instrument Museum. They have close to 1100 old instruments on display. You get headphones when you enter the museum and when you stand in front of each instrument it plays the music made by the instrument. Pretty neat really.
- Having not consumed enough Belgian beer while we were in the country, we decided to take a mini-bar crawl on our final night. We went to the bar where the waiters are known as walking beer encyclopedias (and the bar that served us barley seeds that I thought were sunflower seeds and tried to eat them…not tasty, oops), then the bar that has a beer brewed specially for the bar and not served anywhere else, then went to a bar close to the statue of the little girl peeing. A side note on Belgian beer. I can hold my own when drinking just about anything. It sufficiently takes me at least 6 or 7 beers to be feeling good, but this stuff is of a different breed. I literally drank a beer and a half and was starting to feel the effects. Not in a bad way, but I was impressed by the 80 year-old lady in a café drinking a really dark beer at 5pm and another woman in our lunch sandwich shop having a Hoengaarden with her lunch. Rock on Belgian ladies!
- We couldn’t end our trip to Belgium without another waffle, so we went back to the main square and ate at one of the touristy places where I had mine covered with chocolate sauce while my brother had his with speculoos (kind of like gingerbread cookies)ice cream.

Oostend

On one of our afternoons in Bruges we took a train to the North Sea to a little town called Oostend. There isn’t much to mention about this town, but I do have two things:
- In Europe, it doesn’t matter if it is a town of 3 million or a town of 20,000, there is a spectacular looking church to make sure that the inhabitants of the town can worship in glory and provide tourists with something to take a picture of. This town was no different and had a great little church right off the main square.
- As it was little after lunchtime, we needed a snack and decided to stop at this little produce stand to buy some strawberries. They were 2 euro and the best strawberries I have ever had in my life. They were good sized, juicy, sweet and simply fantastic. My brother and I consumed them all in about 4.7 seconds.

Bruges

If you only have a short time in Belgium I vote you go to Bruges and stay there. The travel book said if you only have 3 days in Belgium spend it all in Brussels, but, I severely disagree and think Bruges is so much better.
- My first dinner in Bruges was Flemish Stew which was really a lot like beef bourguignon, without the red wine base. It was essentially beef in a red stew sauce. It was really good, but ended up being too much of the same thing for me.
- Bruges is the first place we tried fries, which were actually made famous in Belgium, not France. My brother tried to order the fries plain, but I made him order the mayonnaise because that is the way they eat fries there, so we had to be authentic.
- We did not climb the famous bell tower, but whoa did it remind me of the movie “In Bruges”. I didn’t particularly like the movie, but the scenery was definitely beautiful.
- Of course we visited the Chapel of the Holy Blood which is rumored to have a real drop of Christ’s blood. Sadly it wasn’t on display while I was there or I would have verified its existence for all of you.
- There were many gourmand treats in Bruges. We had fries, our first waffles (my brother’s with strawberries and cream), my brother made his own mocha coffees two times (he just told the barristers what he wanted and they gave him the ingredients) and we went to the chocolate museum that gave us real pralines after the tour was over. This museum also had a life-size statue of President Obama. I didn’t really think it looked like him, but am giving the artist the benefit of the fact that chocolate isn’t the easiest medium to carve out of.
- A two-hundred-year-old windmill was also on our list of places to visit. The stairs going up and down weren’t all that steady, but it was neat to go up into it and see the view and how they used to mill back in the day.
- Bruges has some really cool old bars. One of the places has tons of different beers on tap and the other was the oldest bar in Bruges. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was neat to be somewhere that is that old. We didn’t drink tons in Bruges, but tasted some different beers that were to our liking.
- We also visited a nunnery in Bruges, which was really peaceful and quiet and surrounded by great scenery. It was really serene and the park surrounding it was really neat as well.
- Some people complain that Bruges is too crowded, and while there are quite a few people there, I really wasn’t bothered by it. It is 800 times better than Brussels in my opinion.

Gent

After spending a night in Antwerp, we took the train to Gent and spent the middle of the day there before heading on to Bruges
- The train station in Gent is deceptively far from the old town. We walked and probably should have taken the tram.
- Once we got into the town it was a super cute and well preserved little medieval place. There were really cool buildings everywhere. We went into one of the cathedrals and were walking around and then we saw that one “exhibit” was 5 euro. Only then did it dawn on my art-history educated brother that “OH! We’re in Gent, the Van Eyck triptych is here!” After a little debate with himself he decided he really didn’t need to see it, so on we went.
- One of the major mishaps of my brother’s trip abroad this time was that he left his charger for his camera battery in NYC on his way out of the country. Major problem for the photographer, so he had been going to camera stores to try and find someone that had the correct charger for his battery. We tried a few places in Gent, but struck the jackpot as we were headed back to the train station. We found a place that not only had the right kind of charger, but also agreed to charge his battery for free (he had paid $10 in Stockholm to have it done) AND this store had flat screen tvs showing the world cup game that was on at the same time. We handed over the battery to be charged and took up residence in front of the tvs. If we’d had had some beer and chips it would have been ideal.
- To get back to the main train station from the other train depot, we decided to take the bus instead of making the 30 minute walk. It ended up being 4 euro a piece to take the bus. WTF! Oh well, at least we made it back in time for the earlier train out of town. Sadly that train was un-air conditioned and was HOT! It was only an hour ride though, but boy were we glad to get to Bruges.

Antwerp

The first city of my Belgium adventure with my brother started in Antwerp. Here are some thoughts:
- Antwerp has, by far, the best train station of any of the other train stations we visited in Belgium. It is old, but not run-down and they have done a great job of mixing the modern restaurants and such with the old architecture.
- Before I went on this trip I told people I was going to Antwerp and they didn’t understand why. After having been there, I don’t understand why people wouldn’t go there! I thought it was a great city. Small enough to walk around and see everything, but big enough to have a huge Cathedral with some very well-known paintings and their own little fortress on the river.
- It was a spectacular day while we were there and we arrived on a Sunday night. Where I live in Europe Sunday nights are pretty boring. In Antwerp there were people out and about: enjoying the beer festival that was taking place in the middle of the town and dining at some of the many restaurants.
- There was one man who had had a little too much to drink I think that really killed the image of Santa Claus for lots of people. We saw him initially and he was yelling random things at people that passed by. Later while we were eating we sat across from a bar that had the World Cup game on. Santa came and started joining in when the fans were yelling at the tv. Then some girl bought him a beer (much to the chagrin of the multitudes), so he sat down and started talking to people who were totally uninterested in him. He pulled a turtle and a LIVE pigeon out of his backpack to show everyone. Bizarre and disconcerting all at the same time.
- Our first night in Belgium we had Italian. I have determined after this trip that on vacation my brother and I eat Italian about 4 times more than we eat any other food genre.
- I took a picture oh of a model of the Cathedral that was inside the building. Aside from most major buildings having models, this model said how much the model cost to build: 168,480 euros. That struck me as downright absurd. I’m just sayin.
- We stayed in a 3-star hotel that was the same price as a hostel. Sometimes it just takes a little searching to find the good deals.