Gwen's Paris Travel Blog

there has been some controversy of late concerning a comment regarding certain varieties of "mushrooms" at the end of my latest blog entry. i would like to clarify that in fact the "mushrooms" in question remained INSIDE of the tourist boutique where they were surely purchased by some other visiting college student or lost adult. (Ok mother dearest? You can stop laughing now!)

Dearest everyone
I just returned from a lovely week adventure in Amsterdam with my Conn. roomy sarah who is studying there currently.
Before I tell you about Amsterdam I am trying to remember if there is anything note worthy from before that...
I had my only midterm for my history of french impressionism class which went well I think, I finished my first hard cover, 100 page, bound book in my book binding class, started a more advanced salsa class (imagine fifteen + saucy latin men and women dancing really fast while gwen struggles awkwardly in the back corner), our program threw a wine and cheese night for all of us which involved some of the strongest cheeses I have ever tasted and a french film depicting one mans struggle between the corrupt world of real estate and classical music, and finally my friend Andrew visited from high school for a week. We did some of the tourist attractions again including the eiffel tower (this time at night) and he voluntarily spent 12 hours alone in the Louvre while I had class.
Andrew came with me to Amsterdam. We arrived in a light drizzle of rain and were greeted by sarah at the train station. Amsterdam is not part of this world, that much I am certain of. From the 600,000 bikes (near equivalent to the number of people in the city) to the smell of marijuana which lingers around corner the city is filled with interesting ironies and subtle beauties.
Seeing sarah was of course the highlight of my little fall break excursion but I also really loved the brief encounter I had with Amsterdam culture. Lets start with the people. Firstly they are GIGANTIC. I mean every single man and woman was a good two feet taller than me. They are all very quiet, polite and strangely enough they love their rules! For instance there is a noise curfew after 10 pm in most residential areas. The biking culture is intense. Bikers have right of way over cars, pedestrians and pigeons and whip around the streets ferociously dinging their little bells if you step in their way. Amsterdam is considered one of the safest cities in the world and I could really feel it being there. In Paris I am constantly aware of my purse and the people around me but in Amsterdam I really felt like everybody just minded their business and kept to themselves. This is the most interesting thing to me about the city - the fact that even though it has an incredibly vibrant and thriving sin culture they are one of the most moral, polite and lawful places in the world.
The first night we were there we visited the red light district which was a very strange experience for me. I am minoring in gender and women's studies at school and couldnt really think of a better topic of research or study than Amsterdam's display and practice of prostitution. The district is large, more than a couple streets, which literally glow red at night. The roads are very narrow and lined with glass windows looking into tiny boxlike rooms in which women wearing huge amounts of make-up and little amounts of clothing pose and stare at people as they walk by. The district is arranged by ethnicity and price. Even though the women are heavily protected by the law and are completely in control of their work the whole situation seemed so sad, desperate, uncomfortable and so archaic to the point of disbelief.
On a lighter note sarah and I rode around on our bikes and went to the RIJK museum which houses a collection of dutch painting including work by Vermeer, Hals and Rembrandt to name a few. We also went to the Van Gogh museum which blew me away. His work is organized by time and the place he was living when he painted them. I have never learned so much about Van Gogh than I did while at that museum. His work is so lively and troubled and such an integral part of that time period in art history. We also went to the Anne Frank house which was a very intense experience. I could really feel her presence in that house even though it was packed with tourists. Her experience, except for the outcome of course, reminded me greatly of what my Omi (my grandmother) went through when she was little in Munich. She even looked a little bit like her when she was really little.
The canals and bridges of the city are gorgeous - straight out of a painting. I also loved spending time with Sarah and her friends pedaling around the city in the rain (four out of the five days I was there )
Of course there are more details I could include involving the many packages of waffle cookies I consumed or the boxes of magic mushrooms they sell in tourist boutiques (!) but I must call my family and go to sleep.
All my love and I will write again soon I swear.
XOXOXOXOXO

Happy tuesday!
The fall is in full force here in the city. The leaves are falling and its smells like autumn everywhere.
I spent the weekend in Belgium with seven girlfriends. We took the bus into Brussels on friday morning and stayed with my friend stephs' friend and his three roommates in their apartment. I can safely say that I had one of the best weekends of my life in Belgium.
Brussels is beautiful, although larger than I expected. The architecture is a mixture between modern/industrial, gothic and dutch and every part of the city looks completely different than the next. There is a large muslim population in Brussels as well so a fair amount of islamic architecture and food is thrown in there as well. I really felt like I was in Europe there. Everything feels really old and well preserved.
We started off our weekend with fries and framboise (raspberry beer) in the Grande Place, or central square, surrounded by gorgeous gothic cathedrals and government buildings. The fries in Belgium are famous. They are think and soft in the middle and really crisp on the outside and you eat them with mayo instead of ketchup.
We met up with a group of about eight boys who some of my friends know from home who are from the south and studying in Brussels. They acted as our tour guides. We saw the "Mannequin Pis" (famous fountain statue of the little boy peeing) which was actually a whole lot smaller than expected, and had happy hour at a bar near parliament. I had kriek there (cherry beer). The cherry was a little too sweet.
On the way back to the apartment we were lost and I had to go to the bathroom so so badly (it was one of those emergency situations) so I marched into a restaurant and went to the bathroom. There is a unofficial rule in Europe that you cannot use restaurant bathrooms unless you eat there. I ended up getting into a fight with the owner of the restaurant and paying fifty cents for my privileged use of her toilet.
Eight of us and all the boys met at Delirium Cafe which houses the widest selection of beer in the world as well as the elected best beer in the world called Delirium. I have never been to a cooler bar. The atmosphere was incredible - packed with young people from all over the world, great music and really great beer. We went there twice this weekend and I tried passion fruit beer, mango, something called "pink killer", Brugge triple, something called "the guillotine" and of course delirium.
We met a group of kids from Barcelona at Delirium. They were completely nuts and totally fun. We went with them to a club called The Crow where we all danced around on tables until about 4am. One of the coolest things about hanging out with those kids was the number of languages that were being spoken among us that night. Some of my friends from my Paris program speak fluent spanish and then of course there was english and french. I think the europeans were really fascinated with our dancing. Americans dance NOTHING like europeans. We actually touch each other and move. I was previously aware that standing in one place and pumping ones fists counted as dancing
The next morning we all ate waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. American waffles are not waffles. I can never eat an american waffle again. Belgium waffles are doughy with a hard sugary coating, the perfect amount of powered sugar and incredibly delicious toppings that dont hide the taste of the waffle itself.
Five of us decided to go to Brugge for three hours on saturday. We got to the train just in time. Brugge is a small town about an hour north of brussels. It is also literally the most quaint and romantic town I have ever been to. The main street has chocolate, waffle and lace stores on both sides, horse and carriages move through the side streets, geese and swans fill the canals which wind throughout the town. All the trees were colorful and the air felt so clean and fresh. There is a moving bar there where men were sitting on this little cart and peddling around the town while drinking beer. Pretty funny.
Brugge is definitely honeymoon material I bought a beautiful framed print of a woman playing the piano probably painted in the 15 hundreds at a market for 5 euro.
We returned to Brussels, ate mussels and fries, went to Delirium again, met up with the Barcelona bunch and sang Karaoke, went to another club and then my friend laurel and I got lost in the sketchiest part of the city, witnessed a fight, almost got into a fight ourselves with a bunch of obnoxious Belgian boys and then were picked up by the police around 5 am. It was quite an adventure.
All in all I had a great weekend. I was happy to return to Paris sleep deprived and totally happy! Each new thing I do is so special here. I feel so lucky to be able to experience all of this.
I miss everyone and definitely ate enough waffles for all of you!
I hope this finds all of you well and stress free
All of my love!!!!

Hi everyone - sorry i havent written in ages!!!
I hope you all have begun your octobers happily and healthily.
Sarah (my roomie from conn.) came to visit me last weekend. we did all the tourist stuff together. I brought her to the louvre, we strolled by the seine, visited the luxembourg gardens, ate crepes, went to a great bar, went to an irish pub to watch the presidential elections at three in the morning, loitered around the paris fashion week tents, had a picnic dinner at the eiffel tower, shopped in the marais and went to an amazing club under a bridge on the seine.
on the metro ride to the eiffel tower we were sitting across from these really cool, hip looking kids. i noticed the girl's shoes, which were pretty great, and one of my friends commented that it would be fun to hang out with them. we went to the club that night called showcase. the dj's were amazing and the atmosphere was so intense. europeans dance really weirdly though, they kind of slouch down and pump their fists around. anyway, we were just dancing around and i was looking down at the floor for a second and i noticed a really great pair of shoes dancing around near me. and then i looked over at sarah and guess who she was dancing with? yup! one of the kids from the metro! they were from norway and we spent the rest of the night hanging out with them.
so yeah. that was last weekend.
this week was pretty uneventful. it was my last week of french class so now thankfully i can sleep in past 7am in the morning. its so difficult for me to put my experiences here into words. i guess i have to settle with the fact that i will never be able to describe everything to you but i guess thats ok.
i went to a really wonderful photography show at petit palais. the artist is named patrick demarchelier. he is a fashion photographer and has done the portraits of pretty much every famous person over the past couple decades. do you know the princess diana portrait with the tiara and white dress? he did that. the show was curated in a really strange manner. the petit palais houses a pretty extensive realist and impressionist collection and the photographs were hung all over the place among the paintings. the juxtaposition was distracting but interesting.
this past week was fashion week here. i hung around the big tents for a while one afternoon and saw a lot of people who looked like they had stepped out of the pages of vogue. it was intimidating to say the least. i tried to get into a show with one of my friends. we dressed up kind of ridiculously and told the woman in front of the entrance that we were fashion students and if we could come in. she asked us if we had a ticket. we said no. she said "bye." that was the end of that.
this past weekend was nuit blanche, a night when paris stays awake from 7pm to 7am to attend various art performances and installations put up all over the city. we saw some pretty interesting projections although i must say i am not impressed with the contemporary art here. there was one cool piece projected onto one of the train stations it was a live projection of the artist pouring paint down a piece of plexi glass. it looked like there were huge globs of paint dripping down the building. it was accompanied by music. a couple friends of mine here are dancers and we are thinking about doing a collaborative piece together working with drawing and dance and music maybe. we'll see what happens with that.
nuit blanche ended with some falafel at 1am, some wandering around the marais and us missing the last metro home at 3am.
this is where i must add a word or two about my only major issue with this city. this issue concerns the metro system and the fact that is shuts down ENTIRELY at 2am every night and reopens at 5:30am. this would be fine if there was a functioning bus system or even taxi drivers who wanted to have clients (neither of these things exist). i mean are there really no people out there willing to work for those two and half little hours every night when most everyone really wants to get the heck out of the street and get into their beds?? i guess not.
well at the end of nuit blanche we gave up on public transportation and walked five miles home from the marais to the periphery of the city. it was quite nice actually i got to see parts of the city i have never seen before and hopefully will never have to see again, saved some money by not taking a taxi, worked off my falafel and woke up with swollen ankles!!!
well my lovely friends and family i am off to painting class!
i love and miss you all.
to those in princeton: go to terhunes for me and eat a couple donuts and some cider. thanks

last weekend our whole program (i.e. 23 girls and our two directors) went to the loire valley. we took a train together . the valley is only about an hour outside of paris. our directors brought croissants on the train for us which was pretty cute. we arrived at the valley at about nine in the morning and a huge, brightly colored tour bus (the kind old ladies take to vegas or atlantic city) was waiting for us outside of the train station. our bus driver was quite friendly and had a large red nose.
we drive through the beautiful countryside for a while and arrived at our first castle of the day. the first castle we visited was called chateau villandry and is very famous for its gardens and they sure lived up to their name. i have never seem more beautiful gardens in my life. acres and acres of rolling land covered in gardens of all color, degree of wildness, grape vines, roses and even a gorgeous veggie garden.
we all ate a good three course lunch at villandry (heavenly chocolate cake) and boarded our bus again which took us to a second castle called azay-le-rideau, a smaller castle which looked straight out of that movie ever after with drew barrymore.
following azay we next ventured up into the hills to an organic vineyard. we all got a tour of the vineyard and tastes of wine at different stages of the fermenting process. after the bus was loaded with about fifty bottles of recently purchased wine we all walked from the vineyard to the neighboring town to see a tiny chapel that had a tree growing right out from the middle of it. i made friends with a neighborhood dog who, unlike most french people, responded to english.
our bus took us to the town of tours where our hostel was located. we all ate dinner together and then hung out in tours town square at an irish pub to celebrate one of our girls birthdays. there is a really special quaint feeling about tours that is quite different from paris. there are only a couple streets, a couple bars and one town square. i really felt like i was in a different country there - it is a very european feel.
the following day we visited another castle called chenonceau. a beautiful, ornate castle with a lovely interior and a nice stone wall where i fell asleep. we drank wine at the castle accompanied by a lovely lunch. more purchased bottles in hand, we weaved our way back onto the bus which took us to wine caves in a cliff side. there we got a tour of the caves which were really amazing and tasted and bought more wine. a nauseating bus ride later we came to our last castle called chambord. this chateau was once a hunting lodge. it as huge and pretty touristy.
we had an incredible weekend. on the train ride home i felt more content and peaceful than i have in a really long time.
this weekend sarah (my college roomy) is coming to visit and i am so excited to show her everything i have discovered here!!!
im off to make sure the laundry machine didnt explode...
i hope everyone is happy and healthy in their respective countries and cities.
je t'embrasse.