Gwan's Year in Review - 2013

Here goes, the second annual installment of my wrap-up of the year according to Gwan. I enjoyed reading through my report on 2012 again, and I know I'll have fun looking back through my 2013 experiences, even if it takes a really long time to put this together!

2013: A year of changes

So I managed to say a lot of positive things in last year's wrap-up, but it really was a year of disaster. I lost my job and spent the majority of the year unemployed and a bit depressed, which is no good in anyone's book. So I'm especially proud of myself that I managed to shake things off, pull myself together and get back into the working world. (PS I don't mean to imply that clinically depressed people just need to shake things off and pull themselves together.)

The turning-point came with a new job in Tours. Thank goodness I got it, because I think if an information job for an English-speaker had magically come up and I hadn't got it, it might just about have put the nail in the coffin of my hopes and dreams of ever getting back on the work horse. The unfortunate side-effect of getting the job, which I never discussed on the blog, was that I was actually meant to do an EVS volunteer project in Moldova, starting in May. Unfortunately, by the time the Tours job started in April, I still hadn't heard anything back about it. I think they finally contacted me about two weeks out from the start date - even if I hadn't gotten a job, it would obviously have been really difficult to pack everything up and move to Moldova within two weeks. I was pretty gutted to lose out on this opportunity in order to spend 5 months working in info management, but I think sticking with the job was definitely the grown-up, sensible thing to do, and I am really grateful that I was able to get my life back on track.

When I learned the contract in Tours wasn't going to be renewed, the race was on to find something else before I found myself back in the dark place of unemployment. After a few frantic weeks of scouring the web, online applications and surprise telephone interviews, an opportunity came through... All the way in a little country called Luxembourg across France's eastern border. 

I'm not going to say the move wasn't stressful. From touring a near-slum to accidentally insulting a secret real estate agent, figuring out where to live and how to move myself there on a serious time budget (and money budget) was tricky. Even after I found my new apartment, I got seriously delayed thanks to an airport strike, screamed at by my old estate agent and almost failed to hire a van. When I finally got to the new place, I had to start a new job while living without electricity for nearly a week, a phone for a couple of weeks and internet for about three weeks. I'm sort of tempted to move again, since I don't like where I live and it's a long commute every day, but I don't think I can face another move for a while!

I miss my friends in Tours a lot and don't love everything about my new life, but overall it's been a positive move. Again, I'm very happy to be working and I've been doing a pretty solid job settling in to Lux/Lorraine life.

And now on to the awards portion of the evening -

Best trip abroad

I seem to have some sort of travel amnesia. I think it's because I'm always eager to go to the next destination, so I tend to think that it's been aaaaaages since my last trip and I haven't been aaaanywhere in any given year. Au contraire, I've actually ventured beyond l'Hexagone on a number of occasions again this year.

• The year began with a mid-January pick-me-up trip to Italy. I had some airmiles to burn, and picked the destination of Bologna more-or-less at random based on how much a return flight would set me back (since I only had enough miles for one-way). I actually made my way straight to Padua, in order to fulfil a recently-acquired ambition of seeing Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel.

Source

This was one of the most amazing places I've seen in my life. The photos don't do it any justice. Definitely, definitely, if you get the chance, do go here. And even better if you go in the middle of winter and are as lucky as I was to be left all alone to contemplate it in peace for a full 40 minutes.

I also ate, drank, and took surreptitious photos of the devil and overt photos of flayed bodies in Bologna.

• January also brought the first of the year's trips to Belgium. I headed to Brussels for a free stay in a lovely hotel, price of admission two days of tests and interviews at the Important International Organisation (IIO).An interesting experience, at any rate!

I took advantage of the free trip in order to take a little side visit to Bruges, which was icy cold and quite pretty. There I fell in love with a Turkish rug, or rather the painting of one in van Eyck's Madonna of Canon van der Paele in the Groeningen Museum. 

• After that, it was back to gainful employment, so I didn't have a chance for any travels abroad until my July trip to Luxembourg to interview for my current position. Thinking that if things went badly I might never go back to Luxembourg again, I stayed overnight and had the time to wander around taking in the sights of Luxembourg on a particularly hot summer's day. I squeezed in a second quick trip in the middle of August, for a bit of stressful international house hunting, before obviously ending up spending 5-6 days a week here currently.

• More exciting than Luxembourg, in August I headed back to Belgium to meet up with my family and take a trip to Liège/Spa with my Dad to watch the Belgian Grand Prix. While the race (and the rest of the season) didn't pan out quite as I would have hoped, I'll never forget the high of seeing Lewis Hamilton get up to take pole at the last second of Q3 - a sentiment that was shared, it seemed, by the majority of the crowd at Eau Rouge. (Sorry to those of you who think that sentence might as well have been written in Japanese...) It was also great to spend some time with my Dad: I'm especially proud of our military-style logistical efficiency in getting to and from the circuit on the three days (no easy feat!)

We also got to briefly hang out together back in Brussels, including a bit of a naughty drunken singalong with my sister, which left me slightly the worse for wear the next day!

• In early September, my job in Tours was over and I got the chance for a proper holiday in Italy (via England) to unwind a bit before my big move. What can I can? The Sorrento/Naples/Amalfi Coast region is just gorgeous. I think Capri (pictured above) was the most beautiful, although Amalfi gives it a run for its money, and had a spectacular cathedral thrown in for good measure. Pompeii, of course, was the most historic, and it was great to supplement a trip to Pompeii with a visit to the Naples Archaeological Museum, which houses many of the original artefacts excavated from Pompeii and other sites.

• We had a few more days in England on the way back too, where I got to hang out with my family and the lovely Rick, which mostly consisted of roaming around the English countryside in the Sandiego family mobile karaoke machine (we also solve mysteries in our spare time), avoiding the rain and looking for Hadrian's Wall.

• I debated whether to put my daytrip to Trier in the "trip abroad" category, which probably shows I've become blasé about such things, given that I cross an international border on a daily basis. Germany is legitimately a different country though (last time I checked), so here it is. We popped across the border to visit the Karl Marx museum (utterly bereft of all things Marx, btw) and visit a true blue German Christmas market. Prost!

• For my last trip of the year, it was back to England again - that makes two trips to England, two to Belgium and two to Italy. Quite a strange year, travel-wise! I spent Christmas chez my lovely friend Liz in the South West, and then we scuttled off to London for my first New Year's Eve in the capital! (Blogposts to come...)

And the winner is...

For the second year running (last year, it was Norway), the family holiday takes it out for the best travel experience of the year. Great spending time with Mum and Dad, and this time round we got tans and limoncello thrown in to boot!

Best domestic trip

I didn't have quite as much free time on my hands as last year (at least from April onwards), although I did have more money of course! 

• Last year was a bumper year for châteaux, but I still managed to knock a few off this year too. A visit from my friend Amber gave us an excuse to check out Azay le Rideau and get to know a vintner in Villandry.

• One good thing about staying in Tours was that I got to claim my ticket to the wedding of the season, i.e. the wedding of the lovely Ella Coquine. In classic Ella style, not everything went smoothly as we raced across (and out of Paris) to get her to the mairie on time. Still, it was a beautiful, memorable, and most of all FUN occasion. Félicitations my dear & thank you for having me!

• I "profited", as the French would say, from being in the Ile de France to go to nearby Fontainebleau, which is worth the interminable walk from the train station with a hangover to see its magnificent interiors.

• At the end of May, my sister and co. came over to drink a lot of wine at the Vitiloire festival and visit Chinon. And we finally got some warm weather and sunshine!

• I had intended to get to some more Loire châteaux before the Metz move, but I only managed to add Villandry to the mix. It's right up there with the best though, especially the gorgeous gardens.

• In late October, I got to be reunited with some of my Tours friends in Dijon. We had dinner and karaoke with a potential con artist and actual stripper (this is a story you really have to read if you haven't already), and visited the beautiful Museum of Fine Arts. 

• Since I work there now, I'll count some Luxembourg excursions in the domestic category. I enjoyed their Christmas markets, took a trip to see the castle of Vianden (from the outside) and, back in France, also saw the castle of Rodemack (also from the outside).

• Rounding out the year, it was back to Tours and then Nantes for a two-stage birthday celebration in which I went too hard on Stage One (the "quiet night out") and was left a bit unenergetic for Stage Two ("big night in Nantes"). Still fun as ever, though. 

And the winner is...

For sheer craziness and the brilliant story that came out of it, the nod has got to go to Dijon. The city itself was perfectly nice, we had some good food, mostly good weather and the museum was fabulous, but just goes to show that sometimes it's all about the company you're with!

What's next?

As you know, my contract in Luxembourg has been extended for the whole of this year. This, theoretically, means I could move closer to work than Metz, but I'm still weighing up my options for a number of reasons. The last move wiped me out a bit financially and also was exhausting, so maybe not just yet. 

In travel terms, I'm off to Brussels again for a long weekend next week, so stay posted for that (plus my Christmas/New Year wrapup). And then ??? There is talk with the Tours girls of a February break somewhere, but there hasn't been any actual planning. I'm kind of caught between the need to get on it quickly to snap up good deals (especially if we're going by train) and the fact that my bank balance is a bit sad after the UK sales (I got some good stuff though!) I haven't got around to even thinking of summer holidays yet, but I'm sure I'll be on the road somewhere this year, you can't keep a wandering Gwan down!

Happy New Year to all!

A slightly more civilised look at Dijon

So, when we weren't dining with a nudist, what did we get up to in Dijon? Compared to that story, I've got to say the rest of the trip wasn't quite as exciting, in blogging terms. That doesn't mean we didn't have a great time though! There was a lot of good food and nice wine, a spot of retail therapy, and even a little bit of culture.

On Friday night, we headed out, accosted some guy on the street to tell us where the party was at, and went first to a bar where everyone was kind of dickish. First, as soon as we walked in, a group of 20ish year-olds immediately started whispering things in French about us to each other and giggling and going "Where is Brian?" (this is a famous French comedy routine about learning English - you can watch a short clip here with subtitles - it's quite funny, but it gets old hearing it every five seconds). One of the guys from the group came up to us outside and wanted to practice his English with us. He did actually turn out to be quite a nice guy, but we were rather cold at first and explained to him that, yeah, you're not necessarily in the mood to hand out free English lessons when his little friends were laughing and saying things presumably they thought we wouldn't understand the second we walked in the bar. Newsflash French people: sometimes those crazy foreigners actually do speak French!

Then later we were still outside, sitting on stools and a guy came up practically with his nose in my cleavage and goes "wow"! He then proceeded to try to explain, first in French and then in broken English, that he was admiring my boobs, with accompanying hand gestures. I found it more amusing than anything, he just kept going as though there was some sort of communication failure between us. You're staring at my boobs from a few inches away and drooling, dude I think I'd understand what you were getting at even if you were speaking Swahili...

So anyway, we left there and moved on to a club which turned out to be a lot of fun! Upstairs they had a live band and more of an all-ages feel, whereas downstairs was a club with a DJ which was mostly filled with early 20s tossers (god, getting old). I asked one guy to take a photo of us and he made such a fricking meal out of it, sighing and rolling his eyes like I'd asked him for a huge favour. And then he didn't even take it right (you have to hold the button down until it flashes, so many people don't actually succeed in taking the photo and then they don't get that it hasn't taken. Since this guy was being such a baby about it, in the end I just said it was fine. Actually, I may have said something along the lines of "geez, if it's that big of a deal then eff off". Whoops!) So we went back upstairs and got our dance on. Fun times!

Someone else was nice enough to take this one

On a medival Dijon street - those pretty patterned roofs in the background are characteristic of the area

Saturday was essentially taken up with much-needed restorative carb-loading at lunch and then shopping (yes, we bought mustard!), before the infamous dinner with Jérémie. Then on Sunday, again after a hearty lunch to soothe whatever wee hangovers we might have had (coq au vin, mmm), we finally got a spot of culture at the Dijon Museum of Fine Arts. This is fabulous, and it's free! Definitely recommended if you ever find yourself in Dijon. The girls had to leave after 45 minutes or so to start the drive back home, but I stayed for a couple of hours and thoroughly enjoyed it.

A bit of background - Dijon used to be home to the Dukes of Burgundy, who were pretty wealthy and powerful in the Middle Ages and the patrons of the arts. The Burgundy territories changed quite a lot over time, but they ruled over parts of the Low Countries at one point, so there are links to the artistic traditions in that part of the world. The museum is located in their ducal palace and filled with some fantastic medieval art (which I love, as we all know). Some highlights:

Ancient aliens didn't build the pyramids, Fraggle Rock did!

I love how adorably dopey zombie Jesus looks here. He's even standing on that poor guard

A chinesey-looking dragon

Vs. a mad sword-wielding dragon

Tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy. Tell me this isn't the most amazing thing you've seen today

Each statue of mourning monks around the base is different

Looks a lot like the photo before last, but it's not the same!

I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse #godfatherjesus

There were these two fabulous gold altarpieces opposite each other (photos below a bit of a mishmash I think)

I love medieval horses

I love how Jesus just kinda looks like he's having a bummer of a day, not going to his death. And check out that weird little dog to the right

Statues by local boy François Rude. This means there is a Rude Museum in Dijon (and I did actually pop in - it's also free!)

So pretty!

I don't think I would have ever put Dijon on my must-see list (we ended up there just by picking somewhere vaguely between Tours and Metz that none of us had ever visited), but it really was a great trip! Largely down to the good company, but I would definitely recommend it for a weekend if you get the chance.

Dîner des cons?

Saturday night in Dijon began with a bottle of champagne in the hotel room while getting ready (after some discussion of whether this would ruin our palates for subsequent wine tasting. Naturally, we decided it would not), and then we headed out to a wine bar to sample some local Burgundy wines. The wine bar was lovely - friendly owner, nice quiet atmosphere, freshly hand-shaved deli platters - but we were a bit disappointed that there was only two red and one rosé Burgundy wines available by the glass. Seems a bit weird for a wine bar! I thought my rosé tasted a bit like fruit juice (although not too sweet) and Liz found her red insipid - it was that beautiful Burgundy colour though. We actually moved on to a bottle of non-AOC "vin de France", which we all quite liked. Well, at least we made the effort with the local wines!

It was getting lateish by this stage, and time for a spot of dinner. After being turned away from a full restaurant, we came across an obviously drunk guy who wanted to speak English with us. It's fair to say we were a bit reticent at first to engage in conversation. Sometimes drunk dudes who want to try out their rusty high school English are a dime a dozen in France, and it does get old. But he asked if we had eaten, we asked for restaurant recommendations, and, in between telling us a million times that he'd had a big apéro already that evening (as if it wasn't obvious), he somehow persuaded us to accompany him to a restaurant. The fact that he claimed to have just won 50,000€ on the lottery and planned therefore to treat us all to dinner may also have been a factor (although we were all a bit sceptical).

He took us to one of the fanciest restaurants in town, but it was just before 10 pm and they weren't serving any more. The maître d was unfailingly polite even when confronted with a drunk French guy and three Anglo girls, and told us just about the only place likely to be still open was around the corner. We headed in, ordered a round of kirs (white wine with crème de cassis, which I don't actually really like, but they're a local speciality of Dijon, so...) and started enjoying a fun dinner.

Jérémie was, I will say, very charming, and we were all having a good time. He pressed us to order whatever we wanted - it was on him! My confit de canard with foie gras duly arrived, and was very nice, if a little over-the-top with the double richness of fatty duck and foie gras, and we accompanied the main course with a bottle of Nuits-Saint-Georges wine, which I'd never heard of, but is a red local to the Burgundy region.

There had been murmurs between us girls before going in about Jérémie's offer to pay, and the consensus between us was that we were going to eat out anyway, so whatever, we'd work it out when the bill came. But as the bill racked up - I didn't actually look at the price of the Nuits-Saint-Georges, but looking online, it seems to start at about 25€ and up, so with restaurant markups, perhaps 50+€ - there began to be certain glances exchanged between us. Jérémie made a joke - "ladies, I'm homeless, but you see I manage to eat and drink well". Melinda replied by saying that she was sure we could run faster than him, but I think we all had a sinking feeling at the backs of our minds that we might be about to be played by a charming smooth talker who would disappear and stick us with a huge bill.

Then the Veuve Clicquot arrived... We love champagne as much as the next girls, but again, this starts from around 35€ online, so maybe 70€ in a restaurant. Naturally, we wouldn't have minded paying our share if it was food and drink we'd ordered, but there was a bit of a whispered conference between us when Jérémie disappeared to the bathroom over whether he was coming back.

At this point, the bill arrived on the table, and we were confused to see that it was only for about 9€ or so, the price of the crème brûlée Jérémie had eaten (and tried to feed to the rest of us, much to my displeasure). We cautiously flagged down the waitress and enquired whether the bill had been paid. To our surprise, our suspicions about Jérémie had been completely unfounded - he'd paid for dinner for four, the apéros, two expensive bottles of wine... everything. It must have easily been over 200€. And he had tried his best to talk us into getting dessert. I guess sometimes not everyone is out to screw you after all? I'm sure, if it had come down to it, we could have sucked it up and managed 80€ each or whatever to cover the bill, but just the fact of being played for fools would have been the worst part.

Jérémie re-appeared and, after an interlude in an Irish bar until we got kicked out at closing time into the pouring rain, we headed to a karaoke bar. I had been harping on about going to karaoke all weekend, since I had walked past not one, but two karaoke bars on the short walk between the train station and our hotel on Friday evening. Jérémie, by now even drunker, warned us that he wasn't sure he could get in since he had a habit of taking his clothes off and giving people the finger and had been kicked out before. Given that he had already briefly taken his shirt off in the restaurant, we probably should have taken this more seriously, but at the time I just laughed and said if he didn't do that, he'd be fine.

The karaoke bar was a bit mixed - there was a looooot of waiting around for endless dreary French songs until we got our turn. The other patrons might have turned in more professional performances, but we all know who brought the fun! I did "Back to Black", with an unhelpful and unsolicited accompaniment by Jérémie, and then we did "I Love Rock and Roll" as a group, which was fun. Again, Jérémie insisted on paying for all the drinks, even ambushing the bartender at the other end of the bar so he could pay before she got back to me with the bill. At one point, we were sitting down after our group number when a bottle of Piper Heidsieck appeared at the table (terrible waste to drink champagne at 4 am, in my opinion, but not complaining).

Trying to stop Jérémie ruining my rendition of "Back to Black"

Mel, Liz and me at the karaoke bar

We Love Rock n Roll!

Late-night champers

Moments later, amidst a general commotion, Jérémie was rushed past our table at a rate of knots, hauled out by an angry bouncer. I didn't see what happened, but apparently he had dropped his pants in the middle of a gaggle of karaoke-singing ladies up by the stage. I guess we had been duly warned! Partly through embarrassment that we had been with him, partly because he had left his wallet and jacket at the table (and he had, after all, been good company and very spendy), and partly because, even with gaining an hour due to the end of Daylight Savings, it was after 4 am, we duly made our exit from the bar as well.

Outside, we had no idea where he had gone and no way to contact him, so we were debating what to do with his stuff when he suddenly ran past with some angry-looking dudes in hot pursuit. We basically threw his stuff to him and skedaddled ourselves. Felt a bit bad leaving him when, it would seem, he was about to get his arse kicked, but seriously, getting involved in street fights on behalf of a rogue nudist is a step too far. Guaranteed fun when I'm with my ladies, but this night was crazy even for us!