cold-hearted Iceland (and warm weather at last).

Hello all,

It's been a difficult couple of days - my parents were supposed to come visit me for a week starting Saturday the 17th.  I know Texas is a long way from Europe, and from Iceland, but maybe you've heard some kind of rumor involving a volcano, clouds of ash, and millions of airline passengers stranded around the world.  (If you've been living at Enchanted Rock for the past few days, read here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/world/europe/20ash.html?ref=world .)

Sadly, it's all true.  When my parents booked their flight to Paris during my "Easter" break (the last two weeks of April, meaning now), I was thinking "oh good, it shouldn't be too cold!".  I didn't think about the cloud of volcanic ash that has drifted over much of the European continent since Thursday, affecting airports in at least 33 countries, stranding 8 million passengers worldwide, and costing the aviation industry at least a billion dollars (if not closer to 2 billion).  After five solid days of paralyzed traffic, many tied to the industry are clamoring for government "bail-outs" and considering emergency lay-offs.  The volcanic event is obviously a force majeur, but that hasn't prevented harsh criticism of European governmental infrastructure which was slow to respond to the crisis and more or less neglected to run tests during its first 4 days.  Instead, airlines such as Air France and Lufthansa, driven to desperation, ran test flights which resulted in no perceptible damage to aircraft, leading them to beg authorities to reconsider.  That article I posted above is the latest in a line of many I've read - obviously this event has had a quite personal impact on my life, but in any case it's been very interesting to see it all play out.  People are calling it the "worst weekend in travel industry history".

It's funny how quickly you get used to things.  At the beginning of last week I was practically bouncing around the apartment in anticipation of my parents' visit.  But on Thursday in class a mauvais sentiment came over me.  I'm not going to say I'm psychic or anything...maybe I just had too much coffee?  Anyway I went about my day, which included picking up the keys to the apartment my parents were renting and scheduling some rendez-vous to introduce them to various figures in my Parisian life.  But when I got home there it was - a message from my mom talking about...volcanic ash clouds?  What?

Parisian airports closed at 11PM last Thursday (that's 4PM your time, Texans) and have yet to reopen.  My parents attempted to re-book and fly into Barcelona, but when I had trouble acquiring train tickets between there and Paris and when I woke up Saturday to news reports that the clouds were heading South, I phoned them - at 2AM their time - to have a little chat about the rationality of the whole trip.  Canceling the whole trip was a hard decision to make, but it was definitely the right one.  Throwing yourself willingly into the chaos that IS European travel at this moment is not wise and might even be considered selfish (think of all the people stranded *away* from home!).  I just can't believe that what would have been my parents' first trip to Europe fell during the worst 5 days of travel history.
--
Think of something awesome you've anticipated for months.  A visit from a loved one, graduation, a wedding, a concert...In the days just before the event actually happens, you think "oh my gosh, it's here!  I can't believe it!  It doesn't feel real!"
And then it ISN'T real!
Do you know what I mean?  Well, I think a couple million people around the world do.
--
As you see from the article above, many airports should be open tomorrow morning and we can expect things to return to "normal" by Thursday...just in time for my trip to Italy on Saturday?  In the meantime, partly to console myself, I'll be going to Montpellier (!) Wednesday-Friday with my Italian friend Simona.  We're going by train - there's a strike, but from what I understand it shouldn't affect the train I bought tickets for.  I haven't yet dared to aborder the question of the French grève, maybe for another post...or a book...

Otherwise, my life lately has been quite the opposite of cloudy.  Spring has finally decided to stick around, knock on wood, and I've been taking every chance I get to be outside.  Last weekend I went "row-boating" (is there a verb for this?) on the Lac Daumesnil in the Bois de Vincennes just south/east of the 20 arrondissements.  A beautiful day with my friends Zina and Sandra:

The next day Zina, Sandra, and I met up with Andrea, Emilia, and Catherine for a lovely afternoon in the GORGEOUS Park Buttes-Chaumont:

I also had the *amazing* opportunity to see Il Piccolo Teatro di Milano's production of Goldoni's Trilogia della Villeggiatura (I think in English it's called "Living on Credit"), this playwright's response to Venetian culture of the late 18th century, which he deemed "excessive" and consumeristic.  The play was directed by Toni Servillo, a renowned Italian director and actor, who also played the role of the "scrouge" Ferdinando.  Servillo's antics were well balanced by the solid acting of Anna Della Rosa, a relative newbie in Italy's acting scene who brought a lot of emphasis to the dilemma of the play's central character, Giacinta, who finds herself caught between "true love" and societal responsibility.  I saw the play with my Italian Lit. class, a revelatory experience in itself - the fact that we weren't at school led my fellow classmates to ask me questions they'd "always wanted to ask" (like why I started studying Italian, etc) and to profess their adoration for my anglophone accent (when I speak Italian, although it's *definitely* there when I speak French as well!).  It's sort of aggravating that it's taken them this long to open up a bit, but that's how it is.  They are the same with each other!  Anyway it was a great soirée.

I managed to make this past weekend a good one despite a couple hours of wallowing in self-pity.  I went to a fancy invitation-only house concert to see some live music, including this artist, who is the most adorable person you will ever see play live:

http://www.myspace.com/alexawoodward  

Sunday: the best falafel in the world (or at least Paris - Lenny Kravitz, among other celebrities agrees!), Place des Vosges with about a thousand other Parisians, and the best gelato in Paris, at least according to Claire's Tahitian roommate Jenn:

That's the news from this side of the air-traffic ban.  Thanks for all your support and sympathy in the last few days.  It's pretty heart-breaking that my parents weren't able to come, but at least they didn't get stranded somewhere!  We'll just have to take on Europe together another time :)

Keep in touch,

Alina :)

Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi universitari

Sometimes people ask me some variation of the question "what's your school like?".
I will henceforth direct them to this post.

**What follows are observations, not judgements.  If you by chance detect irony, sarcasm, or criticism, just remember that it brings me one step closer to many French students I know who never cease to complain about their universities.**

Let me tell you about the Italian department at the University of Paris III - The Sorbonne Nouvelle.
First of all, the department is not located in the same building as most of Paris III.  It is located just down the street on the other side of an apartment complex.  Just a two-minute walk, though, which is more than I can say for the German department of Paris III, which is not located in Paris.
The Italian department of Paris III is located on the fifth floor of what must be one of the ugliest buildings in the city, with thick brick-sized windows cut in an irregular pattern on the top two floors.  The department is accessed via a mysteriously wide stairway or an elevator (which you can reach only by a different entrance) whose control panel looks like this:

Exit the elevator and you find yourself in a small room with plastic walls (what are those called?), linoleum floors, and a column in the center.  The only hint that you're close is the long lists of grades taped up on the wall to your right.  The place is dark (lights that turn themselves off and which I never bother to turn on) save the tiny rays of sunlight that might be streaming in through about 6 of those brick windows cut randomly into the left-hand exterior wall.  Make a u-turn to the left and head down a long hallway.  Again, signs with arrows urging you forward are the only indication that you're not in another dimension.  Turn left and walk down three stairs and a shorter hallway before you get to an unmarked-door that is, as it turns out, the Italian Department (which is also the Romanian department, but nevermind about that). 

The department is composed of approximately 8 rooms: bathroom (one sink, two stalls - one men, one women), teacher's lounge (with an annoying code-lock which you'll read about later), the director's office, the secretariat (department secretary), the Salle Polyvalente (the only classroom in the department), two spaces that I'll call "anterooms" which connect the various other ones, and the library, which is technically composed of 5 "spaces", indicated by an arrangement of shelves or a partial wall - "the library", "the reading room", the librarian's office, plus a corner divided from the rest by a free-standing screen, behind which you'll find everything necessary to watch a movie, and a trapezoid-shaped office that seems to have been built off of one of the walls and which I assume to be the vice-director's space.  

Most department classes are held in Paris III's main building down the street, but my 8:00 AM Monday morning class last semester was held in the Salle Polyvalente.  The room is at least three times as long as it is wide, with 2-foot tall windows lining the entire periphery of the two exterior walls.  There is ragged netting strung up outside all department windows.  There is one small heater in the Salle Polyvalente which has usually been left off all weekend (and Texans, no matter how cold your winter was, ours was colder).  The Salle Polyvalente is connected to the rest of the department only by a small door at the back of the room which leads to the bowels of the secretariat.  You're supposed to use another door across the landing to get to the other rooms, but when this second door was locked even after its appointed hour of opening on Monday mornings and our professor needed to grab a book from the library or access the photocopier found in the second anteroom, she would hammer on the door at the back of the Salle Polyvalente until the department secretary emerged, dreary-eyed and somehow always surprised to see who it was.  Other than desks and a blackboard, there is a computer which I have never seen used and several file cabinets which may or may not contain something.

The secretariat of the Department of Italian at the University of Paris III is open two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon on Mondays, Tuesdays,  and Thursdays.  It is closed Wednesdays and Fridays.  During peak periods such as "registration" - current college students in America, whatever images this term provokes in your heads, imagine something 50 times less organized than that, and you're probably right on target...Anyway during peak periods it is sometimes possible to see the secretary who to my knowledge is always in her office whether it is one of the indicated six hours of the week when she should receive you with open arms or not.  I've only met her twice, once in September when I was attempting to register for classes and she had me fill out extensive paperwork and write a letter of intent (in French of course, and on the spot) to enroll in classes (both of which, I was later informed by the director, were unnecessary), and another time when I convinced her (with some difficulty) to open the teachers' lounge so that I could put an assignment in one of the teachers' boxes. Let it be noted that was the third trip I had made to the department over the course of a week: the other two times the teachers' lounge was locked, the department was a ghost-town, and the secretary wasn't answering her door.  I know she was there.

The library, definitely the heart-beat of the department, is open from Monday to Friday 9 AM to 6 PM.  If you are one of the lame stragglers still there when 5:50 rolls around, you must clearly indicate - usually by glancing at the clock overhead - that you are aware of the time and by 5:54 you must be finishing the last sentence of the last paragraph and demonstrating full willingness to return your book to the shelf within the next 30 seconds, lest you suffer the wrath of the grumpy librarian (there is also a nice one, although I have inferred that Grumpy is in charge) who is definitely foreign and presumably Italian (or Romanian?).  I once made the mistake of attempting to stay until 5:58 and Grumpy hasn't liked me since.   

At mid-day the library is a-buzz, usually with the chatter of several students who take no notice of the sign out front which reads "Nous vous prions de respecter le SILENCE" and circle up around one of the larger tables to "study", an annoyance excused only by the fact that there really is no other place for them to meet.  The only other regular noise is the high-pitched whine of the security posts at the door to the library; unfortunately the photocopier is located outside these doors, and the librarians are so habituated to the alarm by now that I'm sure stealing books would not be a problem.  The photocopier is in that second anteroom, where there is also a small table surrounded by bulletin boards covered in posters for events, most of which have already passed, books which have come out sometime in the last year, course schedules which were put up the day before classes started, etc.   A couple months ago I noticed a petition asking for signatures in support of a Turkish (?) student who had been too sick to renew his student visa and had been deported in the middle of the school year.  On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I usually lunch at this table amidst these bulletin boards, accompanied only by a flickering light overhead.  

As I did this last Wednesday I took a look around.  My first thought: it's amazing how fast we adapt.  My second: I'm going to appreciate being back at UT.  

Are the differences somewhat artificial?  Yes.  Does learning still happen here?  Absolutely.  But...

University tuition in France: negligible

University tuition in the States: not so much.

Not having to consult your watch, your calendar, and possibly the phases of the moon to be granted a hearing with the department secretary: ...priceless (?)

A Tale of Three Cities

Hey gang!  Sorry for yet another irregular pause.  It's mid-term time here in Paris, but I've been voyaging quite a bit as well.  Check out photos from:

Lyon

Chartres (starts on page 7 of this Daytrips album - remember this from last semester?)

Chantilly (back by popular demand...Daytrips album numéro deux !)

-tidbits -
I went to Lyon with my friend Pauline who did an exchange in Austin last year and lived with me at Halstead.  We stayed with her family, who actually live in Irigny, just outside Lyon.  She has a big family - 2 brothers and 2 sisters, and like many French young adults, they all live at home (except Pauline of course, who lives in Paris with her boyfriend Mamadou).  I would say the frenchiest thing about them was the way breakfast was conducted.  Each night just before bed, Pauline's mom sets up the long kitchen table with several jars of jam, as well as different breads, pastries, cookies, and chocolate in at least two forms: Nutella and various powdered chocolates to which they add heated milk (made, I'm guessing, by the earliest riser and kept warm in a thermos as the rest of *us* straggle into the cuisine).  Don't worry, there's coffee too.  I also experienced for the second time recently the French tradition of not using plates at breakfast.  But croissants make crumbs!  Simple solution = shake out the table cloth after everyone has eaten.  Laurence doesn't do this in Paris, for a few reasons I suppose, one being that she and Camille usually eat breakfast in the salon while watching the news, the second being the fear of shaking your breakfast crumbs onto some poor passerby's unsuspecting head.  I don't have any memories of Parisians shaking tablecloths at their windows in the morning, but from now on I'll pay closer attention.
Pauline's mom prepared a few lyonnais dishes, such as the blanquette de veau (which is also what Maurice prepared for Laurence's birthday last fall) and canelles.  As Julien, Pauline's youngest brother explained to me, at least half of all French dishes are actually Lyonnais.  It is supposed to be the gastronomy capital of France!! :)
We ventured into the city twice during our weekend trip, once to hit all the main sights and again the next day for lunch with some of Pauline's friends.  The main sites:
-the pedestrian rue Victor Hugo, which leads to the
-Place Bellecour, the largest pedestrian "place" in Europe, connected also to the
-Avenue de la République, which took us to the
-Opéra and also to the famous
-Hôtel de Ville (mayor's place) of Lyon.
There's a fountain made by Bartoldi (which was originally destined for Bordeaux, but that's another story...).  Lyon also has a replica of the third floor of the Eiffel Tower.  Mamadou, a native Parisian, enjoyed chastising Pauline about this.
We also saw the vieux quartier of Lyon and took the furnicular up to the sommet of hill, where we saw the Basilique de Nôtre-Dame de Fourvière, dedicated to the Virgin Mary.  There's been a monument to the Virgin there since the 12th century, but the church which stands there now was mostly constructed in the 19th century after she (according to the catholic faith) saved Lyon from the plague.  I have to say that this was one of my favorite churches yet.  Being more modern than most famous cathedrals, the style is very different, (but not "modern", more like baroque/classical, which is chronologically more modern than Gothic...) and I really liked the colors and the (very) fanciful decoration of the sanctuary.  When upon returning I told Maurice that I had seen the Fourvière, he had a somewhat different reaction: "Qu'est-ce que c'est moche !!" (It's so ugly!).  I will admit that it's a pretty girly structure.  I find that fitting, however, since it was constructed to honor one very worshipped woman...
Merci beaucoup, Pauline et Mamadou, de m'avoir invitée ! Je me suis très bien amusée :)

Chartres - After a long hiatus, I decided to take advantage of this long Easter weekend to continue my daytrips.  Yesterday (Friday) my friend Zina and I ventured out to Chartres, which is about an hour (by train) south/west of Paris.  Though the weather was fickle (normale), I really enjoyed this trip.  Chartres' main draw is it's cathedral, which dates to the  12th century and is considered the best-preserved medieval church in Europe, having miraculously escaped major damage during the Revolution and WWII.  It's mix of Romanesque and Gothic is quite easily observable thanks to the two towers (looking at the cathedral, the one on the left is Gothic, and the one on the right is Romanesque).  Chartres became a celebrity of the religious world when Charlemagne's grandson gave the town the Sancta Camisia, the cloth believed to have been worn by the Virgin Mary when she gave birth to Christ.  The Cathedral is also known for it's remarkable stained glass, which are characterized by the color now known as "Chartres blue" - it hasn't been reproduced in modern times.  Finally, the last highlight is the labyrinth which is carved into the floor in the nave of the church.  The labyrinth was designed - in the 13th century - as a substitute for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  Those wishing to make a symbolic journey there could go through the maze on their hands and knees.  I couldn't get a good picture, but you can look for photos of the labyrinth (and the cathedral in general) online - I recommend it.  Don't forget to check out my photos, too (see the link at the beginning of this post).

Today, sadly another day of moche weather, I made the short journey to Chantilly, located about 30 minutes North of Paris, with 4 other american students.  Chantilly is the French word for whipped cream, and this is the town where it was supposedly invented.  But Chantilly (the town) is mainly known for its fabulous chateau, which houses the Musée Condé, and it's passion for all things equestrian.  Next to the chateau is a huge stable-house, built by Louis Henri Bourbon who hoped to live there after he was reincarnated as a horse. Uh huh.  The stables are as fabulous as you would imagine them to be based on this fact.  We concluded the day with some chantilly in Chantilly!

Time continues to fly and we'll see if I get another post in before my parents come in two weeks (and before I go to Italy at the end of April).  Let's hope there will be enough exciting things going on to merit one.  In the meantime I'd like to thank everyone for the continued readership, support, and feedback.  Don't forget to shoot me a message about any thoughts you've got goin' on grace à (thanks to) my blogging.  You can reach me on here, on facebook, or at alinaslavik@mail.utexas.edu

And if you don't send me a message, at least send some of that sunshine and heat my way!

Happy Easter everyone,

Alina :)