Life of Åsmund
A student life
TOUSSAINT: DAY 5
Nov 9th
Day 5 – 29th of October:
By now we had a good system for getting up. Every day we met outside the Hostel at 0900 (Zulu time). My head felt better this day than the day before, but was filled with snot. Our plan today wasto walk “The axis of France” – the distance Louvre – Place de la Concorde – Arc de Triomphe. I looked forward to the sights, but understood it was going to be hard.
Axis of France as seen from Google Maps
We did the normal shopping round of baguettes, today I bought vitamin juice and candy to make my day easier. We ate breakfast in front of Le Louvre (the world’s most visited art museum), it was cold – really freezing! Luckily the sun raised and shined when we had eaten, which helped a bit on the cold part.
There is always a line to Le Louvre.
A cold, cold, cold breakfast
We passed Le jardin des Tuileries before some of us ate a crêpe (pancake) or a gaufre (waffle) in front of Place de la Concorde.
Place de la Concorde was the host of a huge happening about 215 years ago when Louis XVI was sentenced to death and then guillotined at Place de la Révolution (as it was called then) on the 21st of January 1793. His wife Marie Antionette followed the 16th of October the same year. The Place is surrounded by huge historical buildings, but we mostly looked at the gigantic Egyptian obelisk in the middle. The obelisk was given to France from Egypt in the 19th century.
Place de la Concorde. Champs Elyssées to the right
Champs Elyssées seen from Place de la Concorde
The famous Champs Elyssées starts at Place de la Concorde and ends at Arc de Triomphe. We walked the 1-2 kilometers to the Arc and visited a large Adidas shop on the way. Juha wanted to get new shoes, but we left without finding anything, a bit expensive maybe? We were all amazed about the Arc de la triomphe, it’s really astonishing! The view from the top of the Arc is best night time so we returned later the same day to go up. Marvelous!
Paris is devided into to parts (ish) the old and the new Paris. The new paris is centered around La défence, the business area of Paris. We took the metro there (it’s a bit far to walk) and had a brilliant lunch in the steps in front of La Grande Arche (a modern arc of triumph).
Lunch in the stairs of La grande arche
Since it was still freezing (the sun was on/off and didn’t really help) so we had a coffee at McDonalds to get warm. We also found a huge mall, Quatre temps, so we went in to shop (the true reason was to get warm). Juha now wanted gloves – his Finnish hands were finally cold!
We strolled back on the Esplanade de la défence and took some photos before we met Fie (our 7th traveler) who had been dropped off at the Arc de Triomphe by her parents.
Front to back: Cate, Juha, Tom, Geir, Nina and me.
Notice Arc de triomphe on the left and Tour Eiffel on the right
We met Victor, Kristofer, Henrique, Kristian and Annika (other Erasmus students) who arrived in Paris the same day. This party of 12 and three additional norwegians (Norginsa students from INSA Toulouse) ate dinner together at Pizza Hut near Centre Pompidou before we went to the top of Arc de la Triomphe (as I told you about earlier).
When we got home I got straight to bed.
The Eiffel tower seen from the top of Arc de Triomphe
SARLAT?
Nov 7th
The reason is of course that I’m still ill and that it (at this point) doesn’t look like I’m going to get well by tomorrow. I’ve been more or less ill for about one and a half week now, so I really need to relax to get completely well. It’s annoying to calf all the time (or is that the mammal?).
I went to school this morning since we had eight hours of mandatory Travau pratique, but I had to forfeit at lunch time. My head was tumbeling, so I wasn’t to any help for the group (my lab partner [binôme] and I).
FX (the binôme) was very understanding and said he would finish the lab on his own. It’s normally a lot to do, so it was very kind of him.
When I got home around noon the tea drinking begun. Now it’s 21h and I am still drinking tea – I’m completely soaked!
I was supposed to go to bed, but I’ve been sitting in front of my computer (like now) drinking tea and starting (and finishing) a homepage project. You can see the little thing here, but don’t expect too much, it was made in only an afternoon.
Oh, by the way. As I worked on the little homepage project I started looking through all the old designs and homepages I’ve made (20-30). And boy have I made a lot of ugly homepages! At the same time I’m glad to see that their designs have improved as I’ve learned more – the last ones are the ones I think is the most beautiful. Mental note: I’ll make a post where I show you some of them!
I’ve added a picture today that I’m really proud of. As you probably understand I took it in San Francisco, on the north side of the Golden Gate bridge. It’s a HDR image (3 images with different exposures put together).
TP: IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH
Nov 6th
At THIS very moment the blog is about 2 weeks old, one of which I was absent. So far the feeling of blogging is good and I enjoy alot the comments and feedback I get!
At the moment I feel very bad. As I told you in the last post, I’m on my way to re-catch the holiday cold from Paris. It was painstaking to complete today’s two exams (the ones we do not speak of), but I guess I can use the illness as an excuse not to do very well on either of them.
I was invited by Etienne at the BEE to talk to a group of Lycée students (high school?). The whole thing was quite nice, they had to ask questions in English and I could answer in English (me having the upper hand). I think they did quite well, considering that the French in general speak English very poorly.
I also had one hour of French course today before the English meeting with Etienne and his group. Our French teacher (Any) was as always talking a lot and we had trouble getting a word in. But I like her, it’s not too bad (Elle est sympa).
Right now I’m dead tired and my head weights at least 25kg. It’s time for bed, I have 8 hours of mandatory TP tomorrow(the French TP, sorry. TP = Traveau pratique = Lab) – hoping to feel better then.
PS. I now see that the post isn’t short at all, sorry for letting my mind wonder. DS.
NO HAT-TRICK
Nov 5th
It’s about living in France and experiencing the French university system.
I came home from the holiday on Sunday, I hope you’ve read the posts and looked at the pictures!
Monday I was back to school, with a lot to do! I’ve been studying like a madman the past three days to be able to figure out how to survive – not one, but two exams on Thursday! When they’d already put in two – why not go for the hat-trick?!
In the meantime I’ve managed to get my holiday cold in return (the one I got in Paris). My head is heavy as never before and my throat hurts. I’m trying not to complain, it’s my fault anyway.
I’m amazed on how INSA manages to set up two exams on the same day, and they are even successive, only 15 minutes brake in between. This is a problem because I have extra time (for being a foreigner and all). So I might not have time to finish the first exam before the second starts. I love it …
When that is said, I’m now feeling confident that I won’t do great on these two tests. Time will show – I will update on that later!
TOUSSAINT: DAY 3-4 (PARIS)
Nov 5th
Day 3 – 27th:
The first problem we encountered in Paris was the one of finding the correct line to buy the Carte Orange – the metro card. After some asking and pointing we found the correct one an bought the tiny tickets (2×4cm). Day 5 we found out that we were supposed to have a card (with picture) in order to have a valid ticket.. This essential piece of info was forgotten by the man selling us the tickets.
Our hostel in Paris was the Friends’ hostel just next to the metro station Berbès-Rochechouart a few minutes away from Sacre coeur. The first night we couldn’t get a room together so I slept in a different room than Geir, Cate and Nina (Juha and Tom booked room at a seperately from us four).
After leaving our bags we went out to see the city. At the Berbès-Roche station I almost got my wallet stolen. It was completely my fault – I had it in my backpocket. Luckily I sensed the pickpocketing before the wallet had left my backpocket.
After this somewhat shocking experience we headed for Sacre Coeur, only 5 minutes to walk from our hostel.
Sacre Coeur by night
Two sentences about Sacre Coeur:
Situated on top of Montmartre, the Sacre Coeur basilica is located on the highest point of Paris. It’s building of the Paul Abadie designed basilica started in 1875 but the last tavertine stone wasn’t laid until 1914 due to a “quarrel” about it’s daring design.
From left: Me, Juha, Geir and Tom
After enjoying the view we took the cable cars down from Montmartre (it’s not far down, like two minutes to walk – but it was free with our Carte Orange ticket …) and headed for Moulin Rouge! We wanted to go, but with the cheapest ticket going for more than 70€ we soon figured out that it wasn’t going to happen. Instead we took the metro to the Eiffel tower.
Left: Sparkling every hour at night! Right: Cool car!
There we saw the marvelous sparkling show that is every hour and tried to get a coffee before going home. Once again it was very expensive (seems to be like that around great landmarks), so we skipped it and left for the hostel.
Day 4 – 28th:
A new and beautiful day in Paris makes you smile, even though you didn’t sleep much because of intense heat in your room. I got up at 8h30 and everyone went to buy baguettes. Breakfast in front of Sacre Coeur. We skipped visiting the Sacre Coeur dome (you can get up to roof level) because the crypt (also included in the ticket) was closed.
Dead sad from the fact that we didn’t go to the Sacre Coeur crypt, we took metro line 2 Cimitère du Père-Lachaise, a graveyard with famous people. We actually spent more than two hours walking around in the graveyard seeing the grave of Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde and Chopin himself. I started to feel a bit off myself. A running nose and a heavy head – hoping it isn’t something serious.
Tired of the dead?
Tom’s precious Welsh Dragon eating lunch in front of Notre Dame
We took the metro back to the center and ate our lunch in front of Notre dame (We always eat in front of great landmarks). After lunch we entered Notre dame, a beautiful church! Cate then went back to the hostel to rest, the others tried to find coffee, but again it was extremely expensive. But we wouldn’t give in this time and we succeeded – Quick gave us coffee!
Notre dame
We had a fast “been there done that” visit to Centre Pompidou. Tom didn’t like it – at all:
“There’s only one thing I have to say about that, quel bordel!”
(Quel bordel = what a mess)
Centre Pompidou. Known for having it’s piping on the outside
We didn’t go to the exhibition, which I think was a mistake, looking back on it – maybe next time. We bought dinner at the Les Halles shopping mall. Cate and Juha made a delicious dinner. I went to bed early to get rid of my cold, my head was heavier than ever.
More vacation stuff in a later post!