Toussaint Vacation Day Two: Arles and Dijon

I had major plans for today, my first back chez moi in 10 days. Most of them included laundry. Since I only have 3€24 in small change to my name and a load costs 6€, and everything's closed today for Toussaint, there's nowhere to get change even if I did free even more cash from my American account. So that gives me license to have spent the ENTIRE day on my computer, right? There was really nothing else to do. I swear. Nothing. (Stop looking at me, sink full of dirty dishes!)

Moving on. We woke up on our second morning in Arles to the sounds of Cécile fighting with her alarm clock. "No way!" she yelled when it first went off. "I do not want! I so do not want!"

Our lovely hostess Cécile chez elle.

A brief aside to tell you how adorable Cécile's English is: whilst hanging out this summer, we were discussing how weird it is that in French the subject and object are reversed when you're talking about someone/thing missing another. Ex: In English you would say, "I miss customer service." In France you would say, "La service à la clientèle me manque (Customer service misses me)." I asked her if it would be funny if I said, "Je manque le frommage" instead of "Le frommage me manque." "Yes," she said. "Because then, is like the cheese need you." She'll also stare at you intently while you're talking and then say, "Sorry, I do not listen to you," when she means she didn't hear or understand what you said. Mignon!


After Cécile got her booty to class that morning, Kelly and I enjoyed a breakfast of leftover baguette, homemade jam we found in the fridge, and swamp tea. We had been introduced to swamp tea the day before. It's when you have loose leaf tea but no bag, so you're forced to fish the sodden tea leaves out with a fork, say, and pile them on an old receipt, say. The level of difficulty is exponentially increased when you're drinking from a dark bowl that camouflages errant leaves. 


We headed out in search of the museum with the really old statue face they found in the river that runs through Arles and may or may not represent Julius César. We got a bit lost getting there, which wasn't so bad when we happened to meander past an olive tree. Now, I've never met an olive I didn't love, so I went ahead and popped one right in my mouth. Holy bitter nasty poison. My sense of taste chose that moment to come rip-roaring back after its vacation, causing me to "Kak! Kak! Kak!" all the way down the street. 

Oh, so many places to go!

We finally arrived at the museum after a few additional wrong turns, and I suddenly lost any and all interest in going inside. I'd already had about as much patrimony as I could take. Cécile called, wondering where we were. We told her we'd gotten really lost (true) and weren't able to find the museum (lie) but now we were hungry for lunch (so, so true). After a couple of false starts we ended up at a place called La Mule Blanche, where they served bull meat. Cécile was really insistent that we try the regional specialty, especially since we weren't able to see the statue face that may or may not have been Julius Cesar personified. 


I ordered the boeuf stew made with bull, and Kelly ordered a glorious salad with quail eggs, duck cutlets, and a hefty portion of foie gras on the top. We ate about half each and then switched. Did you know you're not supposed to spread foie gras? It's not pâté, you animal. In any case, it was really f'ing delicious, topped only by the raspberry millefeuille with English cream and meringue cookies for dessert. This may have been the best meal I ever had in France.

Bull bourguigno

 We then had to bid our hostess adieu and take off for the train station. We were treated to the most sunshiney glorious weather as we rolled through Provence in our Harry Potter-esque train compartment. The only thing not charming about that train ride was that Kelly beat me in Scrabble. By a lot. 

Our next stop was Dijon, where I was required to go for my medical visit that would garner me a very important stamp in my passport that would allow me to keep all my limbs if the government ever found out how often I buy purchases under 2€ for the express purpose of breaking a 20 into more manageable sums. Or something.

After a very blasé dinner in one of the few bistros still open, we happened upon a sight that made Kelly squeal in delight (rhyme!): Workers hanging Christmas lights in the streets. Seeing this was one of her long-cherished dreams since girlhood. And the French government made it happen for her, by forcing me to cut my trip in Arles short so I could get that shiny new stamp. And you said they never granted any wishes...

Christmas lights go up in Dijon, joy explodes in Kelly's heart.

 Next up: medical visit in Dijon, meeting awesome Couch Surfing Grenoblins in Grenoble.

Toussaint Vacation Day One: Arles

Remember how I'm only working here seven months, but I still get two months' worth of vacation in that time? I got my first chunk of vacay last week, which was well-deserved after my first two arduous days of actually teaching the students by myself.

That means I probably shouldn't complain about the fact that I opened my French bank account more than a month ago, and I still can't use my check card because I don't have the PIN code, which has probably arrived at the school but it's a national holiday and I might not be able to get my mail until school reopens on Wednesday, which might not even make a difference because I haven't been paid yet even though I was supposed to be on Oct. 26, and thus I've had to use my American debit card and I imagine it's going to be a nightmare to transfer funds back to that account so I don't overdraft after my next student loan payment. So I won't complain about that one bit.

Ahem. I plan to do a post for each city, and then aggregate them into an overview post on Truth Pirates so you can read only the parts that interest you (although it's bound to be entertaining so you should probably just read all of it). Allez-y!

My travel buddy was Kelly, who is doing the same thing I'm doing but in Paris. She and her husband are kind enough to host me in their love nest whenever I pop up to Paris, which has been alarmingly often. Kelly is really f'ing funny, super good at saying "merci" and sounding French, and teaches me a lot of useful things, like that WTF can mean "Welcome to France." She has also been instrumental in ensuring that I don't die by showing me a number of dishes than can easily be prepared in teeny tiny French kitchens.

Kelly getting blown away by Arles

The strike, as always, made traveling difficult. The French don't like to tell you what platform your train will be on until 5-10 minutes before the train is scheduled to depart. This results in huge masses of people crowded around the departures board, getting cricks in their necks from gazing up. As soon as a platform number appears, a great horde will detach from the larger mass and run there as fast as they can to ensure good luggage storage and a seat. Yes, in these dire times of strike, your ticket purchase does not necessarily guarantee you a seat on the train. Ours was stuffed to the brim, with people packed into the aisles for about an hour before things thinned out enough for them to sit down.

We were going to Arles to stay with my friend Cécile, who I had met in Portland last summer while she interned at a dance studio and worked on a paper about American cultural institutions. She was coming back from Paris the same night we were due to arrive, but had arranged for one of her friends to meet us and give us the keys. I got a flurry of texts from said friend, some of which didn't make a whole lot of sense in English ("Ok so marjo waiting you to the place du forum. She gives you the keys. You can eat to the restaurant and wait Cécile."), and some of which made absolutely no sense in French ("Marjo va o ciné moi je sortiré du sport dc jvé pa lé amené juska ché toi et veul alé o resto els oront lé clé dc el tatendron envil.").  In the end, our train from Lyon was more than an hour late, so we just waited for Cécile herself at the train station.

Roman ruins in Arles

The wind was just HOWLING when we got in, and did nothing to warm up my Frenchy friend's frigid studio apartment. She made us some bowls of ramen and then Kelly and I huddled together for warmth in Cécile's bed as we tried to get enough feeling in our toes to go to sleep. I had been feeling poorly since a rain-soaked tour of the Versailles grounds a few days earlier, and awoke completely encrusted in sick. My head was pounding and I couldn't breathe out of my nose, which was probably for the better for it prevented my two favorite allergens-- cat and cigarette-- from gaining access to my face.

We scooted out the door by 9 so Cécile could go to class and went to a café for a typical French breakfast: crossaint, baguette with butter and jam, and a hot drink of your choice. Then we mosied around the Roman ruins while trying not to get blown over by the wind. We made a stop at an antique shop, where Kelly happened upon this gem in a newspaper from 1916:

Who better to relieve constipation? Mini WWI-era soldiers!

Next stop was the Musée Réattu, home to some fine art by Réattu himself, a few Picasso drawings, a few carpets and dresses from hometown hero Christian Lacroix, and a whole lot of contemporary art I was not too fond of.  Not represented at the museum was Van Gogh, whose scenes of Arles are some of his most famous. My favorites were the photos of museum workers unpacking the Louvre's masterpieces once the war was over. I also really like this guy, who managed to embody exactly how I felt that day:

Ay wad do suff'd up

After all our forced marching in the wind, it was time for a pause that refreshes. We settled at a tapas restaurant and ask if we could see the menus. As it was 3:00, it was clearly no time for food, stupid Americans! We could have drinks, crepes, or waffles, and that was IT.  I ordered a crepe with speculoos, a gingersnap cookie cream I'd read about on one of my favorite blogs. I think I liked it... I'm pretty sure I liked it... I know I definitely enjoyed the texture... but I was incapable of tasting anything that day. Now that my sinuses have cleared I've become obsessed with finding speculoos so I can properly give it a whirl, and it has of course chosen to elude me. Welcome to France.

We made dinner for Cécile that night (which both she and Kelly assured me tasted good since I wouldn't have known a truffle from dog poo at that point), and then she took us out to a bar to meet some of her friends. Understanding French is hard. Understanding French over loud music when the speaker is turned away from you is harder. Understanding French over loud music when the speaker is turned away from you and you can't hear anyway because your head feels like it's wrapped in styrofoam is impossible. And that was my evening, in a nutshell.

This café was supposedly inspiration for one of Van Gogh's famous paintings. Cécile says it's a fake, but I'll always believe, Vinny!

The one part of the conversation I was privy to was about Kelly's and my future destination: Grenoble. One of Cécile's friends insisted we wouldn't like it because it didn't have any patrimony. Patrimony was clearly a big deal to the Arlesians, who had not only Roman ruins gracing their fair city, but they had the head of a statue that may or may not have been a likeness of Julius Cesar sitting in one of their museums.

We went to sleep prepared this time with long underwear and all the Minnesota heritage we could muster. Next up: Day Two: Arles and Dijon.