Return to Aix [Again]: Shisha

Well officially I’m the only one in my programme to return so many times to France since we’ve left. Once, when I was in Finland [to see Maïté]; another when I was in Netherlands [to pursue Maïté] after my trip to Ireland. And yet another time [this time] in the same semester with Wasiq [to drop off some of my luggage]. Yes, my third return to France!

Well Aix-en-Provence will never change, it remained the same charming little ville that I had left it to be. On this return however Wasiq and I, spent one night only; and spent it well in an amazing Shisha-Tea Bar [Salon de thé oriental] in the centre-ville called Sur la route de Samarkande.

Very oriental, charming, warm, and flavourful place: with teas I would never dream existed [well over 30 flavours in their menu], and the hugest Shisha pipe I’ve ever seen [not that I’ve seen that much in my life].

Of course the Shisha was used to smoke herbal fruits and not cannabis, since we were in France and no longer the “free” Netherlands [not that we smoke cannabis in Netherlands, just that it’s tolerated to do so there]. I can’t remember the name of tea I had, but it was some fusion of flavours that exploded in my mouth. Wasiq had gotten me into the “tea” culture a week before, so this was quite the treat for me.

And of course we were in good company of the girls: Wasiq’s Germany friend Rebecca, and my French friend Emeline [who we crashed by for the night]. Thanks Emmy!

For more pictures, see:

• Return to Aix: Shisha

French Misconceptions

It's strange that we know and grew up hearing things and phrases such as "French fries", "French vanilla", "French toast", "French manicure" and "French maid". Yet, in France, NONE of these were apparent. It's almost as if the entire world is fed a lie, a misconception of the definitions of France.

If you ask a French person what is French vanilla, they have no idea what you are talking about, they drink cafe au lait. [Strange that this was my favorite caffeinated drink as a teenager and i ended up in France]. It's like asking the question what do cows drink, the answer of course is not milk but water. As for French fries [called pommes de terre frites in French or simply frites], they were invented in Belgium; I have not seen a French maid to this day in France; nor a French girl with a French manicure.

The best is French toast, the French people don't even eat breakfast, they eat what is called "petite dejourner" which is breakfast but does not contain any of the traditional "English breakfast" salt items, such as eggs and French toast, what they have is the "French breakfast" which consists of sweet items, such as pain au chocolat [croissant with chocolate :S].

Who came up with these things? We think that it's so "French" and the French don't even know what it is or don't use it themselves. These lies about France. It just goes to show that the world is still quite segregated and cultures are unknown to many and misunderstood by masses due to commercialism, tourism, and modern Television lies, rumors, and urban legends. All these were wrong, I did, however, experience the real "French kiss", and that i can assure you is the same as or better than traditionally portrayed. ;)

Last days in the southern France

12-12-2007, a day we will never forget, the last day of school in France, the beautiful, warm, south of France, south of Europe, Mediterranean sea, our last taste of French culture, French cuisine, French girls....

On this sad day, we had our last lecture with the entertaining Mr. Paul Laifa all of use dressed in suites. After which they took us for lunch at a typical country-side French restaurant. We had a nice afternoon with most of our lectures along with the coordinators of our programme for France [Monique, Robbe].

As we all departed that afternoon, to return to our respective home countries, travel Europe for two weeks, or just have a Christmas in France, we all felt as if we would never see each other again; SO strong has the bonds been built in us. Yet, we all will meet again in Finland in no more than 3 weeks, it felt hard to leave.

It's so strange how quickly one can develop ties to a place [not to mention my girlfriend, but that requires an entire blog post on its own]; within 5 months, we were all attached to France and felt the pain in leaving it behind, considering especially the harsh, dark [oh my god there's the sun in that picture!] winter that awaited us in Scandinavia.

We'll hold this beloved country in our minds and hearts forever.

--
Jevin :(

Check the Picasa Web Album for more pictures on our Last Days

Saint Tropez - On the Way

Saint-Tropez is a commune of the Var département in southern France, located on the French Riviera. Famous for its famous and wealthy guests, it is often called the Marbella of France. An association known as Students in Aix organized a trip to this place, and we all [15 of us] agreed to go.

anyways here are some pictures of the [monotonous] European landscape on the way to Saint Tropez; there were a lot, a lot, a lot of wine fields.













Sunsets and Landscape, and our guide [in the green shirt] he was cool except he kept on saying "donc" [which means so or therefore] after every couple of words that he said, almost like a filler like how we say "um" or "like" in English:

Baguette

The famous French baguette [no bag, no covering, just hold it in your hand - as is - and walk down the road with it.] I just had to try this, I mean, it's France, why not. It can be hard at times, but if you eat it right when it comes out of the oven, it's really "lovely".

La Ville de L'Avignion

Weekends in the south of France, with this warm weather, can't be wasted, so we decided to go to the famous city of Avignon known for the Pont Saint-Bénezet [a.k.a Pont d'Avignon] [bridge]. The city was really nice, the river was amazing, and so was the bridge, but other than that, France is starting to become a bit monotonous: same old buildings and cobble-stone roads, same old country-side and landscape; we have to begin expanding outside of France - Spain maybe? or Italy, how about Prague? It's so easy to find your way around, a lot of people cringe at the fact that its a large mass of land and you can get lost, but I've been to three cities in France so far and i feel like i can go anywhere in France, it's practically the same [with a city centre at the heart of the city], and the maps are very explicit.

On the way to Avignon, some landscape, Marcos and Tinting [i love this picture: done with a color accent effect on my camera], the church looking building is supposed to be another Notre Dame, and nearing Avignon - there was a tractor made out of hay [now that's when you know you're in real country-side].




These are some shots of the buildings in the city centre of Avignon, what's interesting is: the city centre is surrounded by a wall/fort [seen in the first image].






The tourist paths; Museum; and almost every city has a "Hotel de Ville".









An Irish Pub; Arch of Trees; the all-too-popular cobble-stone road.










The Theatre.

The City of Marseille: The Old Port

Marseille is beautiful mostly because the seaside is right beside the city, the Old port is amazing, cool and breezy, with all the boats bordering the seashore, roads bordering the boats, and restaurants bordering the roads. Here is the lovely, blue Marseille old-port.













Panoramic of Marseille Port [360 degree photo-stitch]:

The City of Marseille [Encore]

I had too much pictures, so i will split my Marseille exploration into many posts, categorized and
aggregated.

Les statues de Marseille: A golden woman, anoter in front of the TGV train station, and some bears attacking a helpless man. [OK i admit, i know nothing of that these statues mean, they just look cool.]









Notre Dame of Marseille, we didn't get the chance to actually go up there yet, due to time constraints [the rest of the group taking pipcture of every stone on the floor], but i'm sur enext time i visit i'll go up and take in the view. For now, though, i got some span shots of the structure on the mountain.

The City of Marseille

Ok, so apparantly Marseille is a bigger and more exciting and beautiful city than Aix [but I really think that's comparing apples and oranges], so we decided to take a day and walk around a bit to discover Marseille. It really is nice, beside the seaside, lots of beaches and monuments, the old port. We got camera crazy and had to continuously shout at the others to hurry up since they were taking pictures of every stone on the floor; i took a lot as well, so here are just some aggregated photos.

On the way to Marseille: a beautiful bridge [i don;t know the name of it], i tried to capture it while the bus was moving, i think i got it well enough. I capture some of the signs that document the city's name. Yes, there's a lot of graffity in france. Unlike New York City [which got rid of graffity problems years ago] and implemented laws to clean up after your dogs on the street, France can be quite a dirty place.







An Arch in the centre ville [city center] of Marseille, inscribed on the top is "a la republique marseille reconnaissante". The streets of Marseille are lined with buildings and buzzing with traffic and people.













This dark stairway with the port in the background was just before the place we stopped to eat lunch [which i will never have cold again - it was quite raw :S]. Eating lunch from left to right: Marie from India, Samsethy from Cambodia, Chris from India, Ming from Vietnam, and Dawith from Ethiopia.] As you cna see: the IMMIT [Masters] group [Cohort] is quite mixed and very international.









The Marseille streets are extremely small, wait, actually there are streets ALL over France [that i've seen so far, in Aix as well] that are so small, that you may even call it a "path" or a "trace". The amazing thing though is that these French people waive their way through them with ease. Most of the French cars, or the cars that are in France, are designed like the "Smart" car [below].










The Entire town is lined with this red line on the streets that passes thorough all the tourist sites and monuments. This is a stupid-proof implementation for those ditsy tourists who can't read a map; so they can simply follow the red line without getting lost.










The Navette buses: these were the buses we took to go to and from Marseille. Notice the angry French woman looking at me almost as if she wanted to rip the camera out of my hands; she's like "what are you looking at!!"