Tu m'étonnes ...

Literally: "You surprise me", this widely used phrase is normally spoken with utter-most non-surprise and at first, I thought my counterpart was mocking me. It turned out that "Tu m'étonnes" is really the equivalent to "I see".
For this post, however, I'm referring to the literal meaning - a list of things that I found bizarre, strange or just amazing about this wonderful city!

• "2o minutes": Every morning, two free newspapers are handed out on virtually every metro station. It's a pretty cool service because it gives you just the right amount of news and local gossip for your daily ride. But the thing that surprised me was that you never find any copy left in the trains or stations. In Munich people leave the newspapers - for which they paid - on the seats and during the day, it get's pretty messy. On page one of "20 minutes" it says "Do not throw away in public", but I wouldn't have expected the French to be so ... obedient.
• Mondays: Around the lab, everything's closed on Mondays. Even the supermarket. Admittedly, shops stay open on Sunday, but it can be quite annoying to find out which bakery follows which schedule.
• Prices: of course, this is Paris and I'm not complaining about rents. Clothes are partly even cheaper than in Germany, but that's not true for make-up and the-like. I paid 3€ for a tiny bottle of hairspray that would have cost me 0.50€ at dm. I know, it sounds a little cheapnik, but still ...
  
• Shopping: yesterday, the first shop of a Japanese clothing chain opened near the Opéra (I personally had never even heard of that chain). I was handed a flyer today when browsing through the Grand Magasins and as they had jeans on sale for under 10€, I thought I might as well drop by and have a look. When I was still on the other side of the street, I saw people near the shop standing behind a barrier. It looked as if they were queuing, but I attributed it to street works going on. When I had crossed the street, however, I discovered that the barriers were in fact fencing off the entrance of the shop and people were really queuing up to enter - not only on one side, but one both sides of the entrance! Altogether there must have been around 100-150 people waiting. Just for a shop! The last time I saw that in Munich was ... hang on, I've never seen that happen in Munich. But then again, people in Paris are in general better dressed than in Munich. Parisians obviously spend some energy on looking good!
• Ads: in the metro, about half of the ads are for theatres, concerts or exhibitions. The ratio in Munich is probably something like 10%. We have cultural things going on, too, it's just that the public is not so interested in them.
• Bonjour, merci, je vous en prie: the French are exceptionally polite. They always hold the door open for you and they rarely ever jostle, even if the metro is packed. During my first week in the lab, people must have thought me to be very impolite because I normally stop saying hi at around 11 am. Here, however, you greet everyone, no matter whether you know him and no matter what time of the day it is. And they have this special intonation for Bonjour that's a mixture between question and exclamation - and very hard for foreigners to imitate *g*.
• Cash desks: here it doesn't seem to matter if you spend hours queuing in the supermarket. The cashiers, no matter whether it's at Franprix, Monoprix or Auchan, are much slower than in Germany - and so are the customers, as you can see well when they are using help-yourself desks.
  

Les journées européenes du Patrimoine

Or in English: European Cultural Heritage Days. These took place last weekend and I have no idea whether there were any celebrations or special events in Germany - here in France, however, it was a big deal, with the free Metro newspaper dedicating several pages on what to do all over the country. I stayed in Paris, but still used the opportunity to see some places I wouldn't have otherwise.

So on Saturday, I went for a free tour of the Hôtel de Ville, the mairie of Paris. Its interior design is very impressive and really not that far from Versailles - I doubt that the mairie of Munich has anything nearly as extravagant as this. In order to show citizens how their hard earned taxes are spent, there were several halls in which different groups of craftsmen working within the mairie explained their daily routines and showed some of their tools. I especially enjoyed the stand of the cleaning ladies which featured several brooms and toilet paper ;-).
The actual office of the mayor, although huge, was pretty modern and not nearly as pretty as the assembly hall.

You might argue that I've had my fair share of churches and cathedrals during the last month, but I still maintained my average of one church/week and visited the basilica of St Denis on Sunday. As St Denis is outside of zone 2 (which is what is covered by a normal Pass Navigo), I advise you to get off at Basilique St Denis (they don't check your ticket when you leave the metro), visit the church, then head south for a quick photo of the Stade de France and go back downtown from St Denis Porte de Paris, which is the last station within zone 2 on metro No. 13.
The basilique is well worth the trip (I especially enjoyed the colourful glass windows) and it's of course the burial place of most of France's kings and emperors. This, for example, is the tomb of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette:


More photos!

Paris j'adore!

It's not that I'm here on holidays. I mean, there are a lot of good reasons for me being here: I'm doing an internship for which I'll get credits back at my university in Munich; I'm (kind of) continuing a class which I took last November; and last but not least it's good (and necessary) to brush up my French, considering I'll definetely need it sometime in the future. But let's face it: the reason why I'm REALLY here is that at some point last summer I decided it would be cool to spend some time in Paris. And it turns out I was completly right :-). So let me give you five reasons why it's so awesome to be here:

• Baguette, ficelle, flûte ... I prefer white bread anyway and the French have mastered it like no one else. Even the cheap stuff from the supermarket is much better than most of the so called baguettes in German bakeries, not mentioning the heaps of good bakeries you find on every other corner.

• The metro. Well, I can understand if some people don't like it and in some stations it's quite dingy, but it's certainly got a charm of its own. And part of this charm is that you NEVER have to wait more than ten minutes - in most cases only two or three. Add to that a very dense network with plenty of interconnections and you know why buying a Pass Navigo is a good thing after all.

• The parcs. Admittedly, having a garden of our own, I don't spend much time in public parcs in Munich, but I doubt nonetheless that they are as plentiful and varied as here. Yesterday I discovered Arènes de Lutèce, an ancient Roman amphitheatre in the heart of a residential area and nowadays a popular place for football and boule.
  
  


• La Seine. I personally find it quite astonishing if a place can actually keep up with its photos. In times of Photoshop I've lost a lot of my confidence in photos. But then, you wander along the quais of the Seine, you cross over a bridge - and there it is, the most kitschy-postcard-view you can imagine. And think of all the places to have pique-niques!

• The houses - they are just soo beautiful! I'm really not the kind of person that likes wandering around willy-nilly, but Paris is an exception, so I've taken it as a habit to explore the town after work. And it amazes me every single day.

Now that I come to think about it, I realize that I've had all those feelings when I came to the city for the first time. Back then, I must have been about ten or eleven and finally seeing Paris, about which I had read and heard so much, left a very strong impression on me. However, this feeling wore off during my following visits - I already "knew" the city and was keen on seeing new places. When I came back last autumn, I hadn't been here for four years and in the meantime, had visited a lot of other places, most of them in China and Asia. And while I absolutely love China as a country, none of the cities there has ever filled me with awe like Paris does - now that I've found the right perspective again.


PS: I definetely need to get one of those T-shirts. I mean, "I love Paris" is nice, but not really French, n'est-ce pas?

Strasbourg

Me voilà de retour de Strasbourg! I had a fantastic weekend in this cute city near the German-French border. It's only about two hours by train (TGV) from Paris and I've passed it several times on my way from or to Paris, but somehow I never had the time to get off. The only reason I finally made it there was because my dear brother had a competition in a small town on the German side of the border and my family and I thought it would be fun to meet somewhere in between - good choice!

I took the iDTGV early on Saturday morning. As its implicated by its name, this train is a TGV (high speed train) with some special features. iDTGV carriages are usually added to a normal TGV and are always in the second half of the platform which you can access only with a valid ticket. That's pretty neat because it spares you waiting for the controller once you're on the train. iDTGVs are divided in two areas which you choose when you book your ticket online (and we're talking of fully online-booking where you can print your ticket yourself - not like the one "online"-tickets you still have to print at a vending machine). iDZap is also called family area because you're allowed to talk as loud as you want to. They also have promotions going on there and you can rent entertainment equipment like PSPs or portable DVD players. The other area is iDZen where of course, you're not allowed to use your mobile. They even turn off the lights when you're travelling early and specifically ask you to speak quietly.
I don't know whether I'd go to iDZen when travelling together with someone, but being alone it was very comfortable indeed and my current cross-stitching made some good progress.

Once I arrived in Strasbourg, I met up with my family and bf and we conquered our hotel "Le Grand Hotel". As our rooms weren't due to be ready till 3.00 pm we set off for a first explorationary walk through the city centre - and got a little disappointed. It seems that Strasbourgians aren't exactly early birds (okay, it was already around noon) and it took us a while to find a café that was open AND not just a libanese fast-food. Admittedly, later that day we made it down to the more southern part of the isle and had a very good shopping experience (my bf enjoying the various Pimkie-counterparts for men which still haven't found their way to German shopping malls), so it's not that you can't spend both money and time in Strasbourg ;-). Dinner was French pique-nique style (there's a Monoprix at the nothern side of Place Kleber, if you'll ever need to find a supermarket in downtown Strasbourg).

Today, with no shops except for souvenir stalls open we had time enough to do some sightseeing. The cathedrale is superb, I like it even better than the one in Amiens although this one has not been declared a World Cultural Heritage Site (on the other hand, all of Strasbourg's city center has).

The Petite-France district is also every bit as picturesque as I was told beforehand. In a way, it's a European version of Fenghuang with lots of small bridges and traditional houses - though half-timbered and not in Miao-style.

As for culinary experiences, we didn't miss Tarte flambée (the thinnest I've ever eaten) and found a delicious gelateria (on Rue du 22 novembre, right opposite LaFayette). I was a little puzzled that Alsaciens claim "Bretzel" to be a local speciality, so I had to try one of these too - but honestly, it's a very cheap copy of the Bavarian original recipe!! I'd recommend you stay with baguettes *g*.

Okay, that's it for now. Have a busy week ahead of me (Friday was my first day where I really worked from early till late - nice change!). Don't forget to check out the rest of the photos!

First Week

Unbelievable, but I've already been here for more than a week! And there a plein de choses to tell.

Not exactly in terms of work, though. One had warned me that the mice for my experiments wouldn't arrive before the beginning of September, but as I have to be back in Munich by early October, I had no choice but to start a week earlier. Therefore, I've spent most of my time in the lab writing my report in advance. Today I was finally allowed to test the technique I'm gonna use on some old samples, so that makes for a change.

But outside the lab, I did have a great time discovering the different quartiers of Paris. I'm not normally the kind of person who likes wandering nilly-willy through the streets, but Paris is something different. Everything looks so inviting and the weather ist great, too, so that I've taken it as a habit to get off at different stations on my way home and just explore whatever is on the surface. Besides J took me on another little tour (and a lovely pique-nique right at the point of the Ile de la Cité) and I visited an open-air concert on Saturday with one of the girls from the lab.

On Sunday, however, I decided to be a big girl and do something on my own. In order to boost my number of visited World Heritage Sites, I went to Amiens and visited its magnificent cathedrale. Getting train tickets in France is fairly simple in comparison with China - the SNCF does have a website similar to the DB site (www.voyages-sncf.com) (if the link doesn't take you to the right site, try googling - don't know what Mauritus Yellow Pages have to do with French railways). You can buy tickets and pay via your credit card - the tricky part is when you actually try to get them. The ones for the TGV are fine because you can print them yourself. But the ones for Corail (more destinations, but slower than TGV) are issued at vending machines. In theory you simply have to insert the credit card you paid with and then you get your tickets. However, the French seem to use a different kind of credit cards with a chip on them. As my credit card doesn't feature a chip, it was simply not accepted by the machine. And even if you have the code of your reservation - you still need your credit card for proper identification. So after all I still had to queue up at the counter and have the lady there print my ticket - not exactly time-efficient.
And then, if you have your ticket, you shouldn't forget to stamp it before entering the train. At least that's what it says on the ticket. As I was daring (or stupid) enough not to stamp mine on the way back, I discovered that you simply have to see the controller who will sign the ticket to make up for the missing stamp. Easy does it, as a French proverb goes ;-).

Okay, so much for the French trains, but what I actually wanted to tell you is how lovely Amiens is - and how not you should not go on Sundays. Everything is closed down so that my only cheap option for lunch was a French variety of McDo (which I do not recommend). But as I just said, the cathedral was well worth the trip:

Does it look familiar? Yes, right, it is a lot like Notre Dame. But then, Amiens also have so cute little canals with a lot of multi-coloured houses which you definitely cannot find in Paris. Adorable!

Altogether, it was a very pleasant Sunday. And next weekend is gonna be just as good since I'm going to Strasbourg!

Paris - Last day off and first day in the lab

Okay, I guess time's overdue for an update ... Sunday was very relaxed indeed. I got some baguette first and later, J made me some Croq Monsieur for lunch. Croq Monsieur is the French term for sandwiches made with a sandwich maker, you basically just add cheese and ham and that's it. But it tastes good and with 42 evenings in which I'll have to cook for myself ahead of me, I'm grateful for any tips on simple meals. After a shopping stop at the Chinese-French supermarket (in which all the fruits are labeled in Chinese and where they have a huge variety of 水饺- yummie!), we went for a little walk which lead us through the non-touristic sites of Montmartre over to Gare du Nord. There we got my Passe Navigo which relieves me of all the single tickets in my pockets (even if it was probably cheaper to continue on Carnets) and ultimately made it to Paris Mondial, by walking through the African, Indian and Chinese streets in our arrondissement. It's really amazing - there's one street where there are only Sari-Shops, jewelers and Indish restaurants and in the next one, you feel as if you warped to Nairobi, with a lively outdoor market going on and everyone looking funny at you because you're white. I mean it's not that there aren't any "coloured" people in Germany, but over here it's le bled (very cool word that originally meant home country, but is used nowadays for French quarters in which you don't feel like being in France anymore). They dress differently (not all of them are wearing multi-coloured tunics, but they have their own style) and they seem to spend a good time of the day just hanging out in groups on the street and drinking tea. It's fascinating just to watch them, so my way to and from the metro never will be boring.

If only the same was true for my work ... my first day in the lab passed fairly well, everyone seems to be nice, lab is clean and tidy and my French is getting back by the minute, but you know how first days are: they give you a pile of papers to read and if you're really lucky, you might start mixing buffers. Well, I wasn't lucky, so all I did was making lists of the antibodies we still have *yawn*. But on the other hand, work is sure to come, so I'd better not complain now ;-).

Paris - Journée 1

Travellers' stories are always the most interesting ones and so I'm not to blame for keeping my blog only up to date when travelling or about to do so. As my latest journey somewhat doesn't fit within the China-range of my usual blog, I've decided to transform this old one from a book blog into a travel blog. Hope you'll enjoy it!

So we'll start with the first day of a trip d'une Allemande (qui confond toujours le français avec le chinois) à Paris ...

With a tiny little delay of only one hour and 20 minutes (bomb warning between Ulm and Stuttgart - live coverage on FB) I arrived at Gare de l'Est this noon, where my patient flat mate was still waiting for me (just kidding - of course I told him in advance that I'd arrive late. Honestly, what do you think of me??). The flat is really part of Little Africa and there are some streets I being a woman would not walk through on my own, but besides living in this quarter (18. arrondissement) is quite inspiring. As a special welcome I was greeted by a colorful demonstration parade of sans-papiers (illegal immigrants) - if my flat mate hadn't told me I'd really have thought it to be some late version of carnival. The flat itself is chaotic, but rather clean and I'll be definitely able to call it home for the next six weeks (watch the countdown!)
.

After I had settled in, J took me for an outing with his brother, his brother's wife and his cousin - pour profiter de la bonne journée. So we spent a really French evening: first we watched the crowd around Centre Pompidou while eating some flower ice-cream (okay, it really was Italian ice-cream advertised in English, but yummie nonetheless). The scoops are called parfums here which I personally find rather interesting. Then we went for a free view of the skyline up on the roof of Centre Pompidou - you just have to tell the guy on the left that you want to visit the restaurant up there and he'll give you a piece of paper you can use as a ticket. Superb!

After a walk over the Ile St Louis, we got some food in a small épicerie and had a picknick at the bank of the Seine. Obviously French people are fed up with their delicious baguette because we had American sandwich toast instead, but otherwise it was a very French thing to do and great fun, too. And last but not least we hit one of the open-air dance floors along the Seine for a few steps of Salsa (I'll spare you any videos, but a Salsa class is definitely one of my top priorities once I'm back to Munich).

Well, it doesn't sound like much, but I really enjoyed myself and it looks as though I've get to know some French life style outside the lab, too! And now, considering that I woke up at 4 am today, you might excuse me ...*zzz*

All the photos ...