Nantes & St Nazaire

Just back from a long weekend, a little bit browner and happy that I saw the sea, even if only for a few hours. Lots to catch up on!

My friend Ruth arrived safe, sound & on time with Ryan Air (gasp!) on Friday, and it was lovely to see her smiling face again at the airport! The last time we caught up, as some readers may remember, was in Milan for the Grand Prix last September - I can't believe that was 11 months ago! That means I'm coming up on a year in Europe!

After dropping R's bags off chez moi, we headed out for a small taste of Tours nightlife and a lot of chatting. A cider, a delicious pizza (each), a small carafe of wine and a cocktail later (um, over several hours...), we called it a night and headed home for some beauty sleep before a busy day on Saturday. We started off hitting the shops in Tours, so that R could get some vital French shopping done. Highly successful inasmuch as R made some lovely purchases and I didn't buy anything. Then it was off to the station for the train to Nantes, via Angers.

We arrived about 3 pm, armed with the address of the hotel and nothing more. No taxis, no tourist office, nothing... After a bit of milling about at the taxi stand, we decided to wing it and try to make our way to the hotel on foot, after consulting a very vague map at the tram station. Pleased to say that we successfully navigated our way to the hotel, and this was but the first of our navigational triumphs! We all know how directionally-challenged I am, and given that I had to correct R a few times on which way to go, it's probably safe to say we're pretty much equally blessed in that department (although ONE of us is a geographer!), so this was an achievement!

I can't remember what we did after checking in, I think we just wandered the streets for a bit - the hotel was pretty close to the central shopping/bar district - and then went back to the hotel for a rest (I fell asleep, whoops) and shower before dinner. Another great meal - galettes followed by crepes, very Breton. Galettes and crepes are essentially the same thing, I think the difference is galettes are made with wholemeal flour and crepes with white flour. My galette was filled with reblochon cheese, creme fraiche, lardons, and potatoes mmm, and then the crepe was chocolate almond yum! This was accompanied by a small pitcher of very nice rosé each, whole meal came to about 15 euros I think, bargain. We then stopped in at a Cuban bar and had about 4 mojitos each, if memory serves. Finally, somewhere in France that makes decent mojitos! Normally (as in Prague), they are made with table sugar instead of sugar syrup, which manages to shoot straight up the straw and completely coat the inside of your mouth unless you spend about 10 minutes stirring first.

Sunday was our sightseeing day, so we were up earlyish and headed out to the chateau of the Dukes of Britanny, which we had passed on the way from the train station the day before. This was very large and imposing outside, but inside was actually made up of several smaller buildings. You could go in and walk around the grounds and up on the ramparts for free, which was nice. We made the mistake of asking some old dude to take our photo - first he made us switch sides, then said 'I see nothing', switched us back, still said he saw nothing, fiddled with the camera for about 5 minutes and then when Ruth told him 'oh well, just hold the camera out and click', I swear to god he just pretended to press the button. In any case, no photo was taken and we were left wondering whether we asked an actual blind man to take the photo... We then had to wait for him to shuffle off before we could ask someone else to do the job.

Inside one of the castle buildings was a museum on the history of Nantes. Very comprehensive. I think we had definitely peaked by about room 20, and were somewhat disheartened that there were still 12 rooms to go! To be fair, it was well done, and there were definitely interesting things, like the history of the slave trade in Nantes. I knew that there were slaves in the French Caribbean, but if you'd have asked me how they got there, I probably would have said the Americans or maybe even the British sold them to the French colonists. Turns out that Nantes was a major player in the slave trade, and that there were even slaves held in mainland France. Nantes was so into slave trading that they went right on doing it for about 50 years after the slave trade was officially made illegal. I could have lived without quite so much information about the rise and fall of Nantes as a port and industrial hub, on the other hand...

After lunch, we checked out the cathedral, which looked all shiny and new - turns out it has been very majorly restored after a huge fire in the 1970s. Restoration work only finished two years ago. The façade was restored in three stages, and you can really see which bit was restored most recently (photos to follow).

On the way to the cathedral we had to cross the street to avoid a drunk coming the other way, vomiting as he walked - this was not to be my last daytime drunken encounter, as we shall see. Nantes seemed like it would be a nice place to live, but I must say, man, did we get hassled! In Tours, and in England in R's case, we don't get yelled at or stared at nearly as much - not sure whether we stood out as tourists, or if it's just what they're like in Nantes, but there were several unpleasant encounters where men leered or made various remarks (not all of which were understood, but you get the drift). One guy yelled something (didn't catch what) pretty much right in our faces as we were walking past, in broad daylight, and he was with a woman! On the plus side, one guy asked us for money in a very polite fashion, and was even nice when we said no.

Anyway, Sunday night we had an apéro and then dinner quite late thereafter, I didn't enjoy the meal quite as much as the previous two nights, but it wasn't bad & the entrée of (essentially) cheese on toast was very nice.

On Sunday, R had to catch her train back to Tours at midday, and I decided to take the opportunity of hitting the beach while I was nearby. So, with beaucoup de tristesse, it was goodbye to R, but it will not be another 11 months till we see each other next - R's wedding is locked in for May, if not before.

I headed off, then, to St Nazaire, a reasonable-sized coastal town not far from Nantes. I still hadn't made up my mind whether I would just stay for the afternoon or the night, but when I arrived at the train station, once again there were few facilities - no tourist information, no luggage storage that I could see, and I couldn't get the coin-operated toilets to work, so I just decided to head into town, hoping the beach was close. Had no idea of the size or layout of the town at this stage. I ended up following the signs to the Office of Tourism, which was maybe not the best idea in hindsight, since it was about a 20 minute walk away through pretty desolate areas - okay, not that far, but on a blazing hot day, with a suitcase and no idea where you're going and how far away it is, it feels longer. Anyway, by the time I got there and enquired about hotels and so on, I decided it would be best to take a room for the night, so I could change into my swimsuit, leave my luggage, and hit the beach properly.

Before I even got to the tourist office, however, I had quite a disturbing encounter. Remember what I said about the vomiting drunk? Mum, look away now... I was about to meet vomiting drunk #2. Just before I got to the tourist office, I came across a Carrefour supermarket, and popped in for a bottle of water and a sandwich. Right outside there was that rarity of rarities in France, a free public toilet, hurrah! When I went in, I saw a girl at the sink washing her hands. It took a second to realise that she was running her cut finger under water, and that she was vomiting. I went up to her and asked her if she was okay, and another girl suddenly appeared behind me and told me not to worry, she would look after her. I was pretty disturbed - they were pretty obviously street kids, and it looked like a serious cut, but I didn't really want to argue with the second girl. I went to use the bathroom, since the girls were between me and the door in any case. It was absolutely hideous - when the girl wasn't vomiting, she was screaming and crying in the most horrible way. The only thing I could think to do was to take some plasters out of my bag when I was in the loo and offer them to the girl who had talked to me. When I came out, there were about 5 or 6 of them in the bathroom, including men, several of them clutching bottles of alcohol. I offered the girl the plasters and she said that I was kind, but they would be no use - which judging by the cut, was true, although presumably better than nothing at all. The wounded girl was still screaming horribly. I wasn't really scared at this stage, since the girl was talking to me quite nicely, but I did think it was probably better not to hang around since they clearly didn't want my help. Looking back, I think I was probably lucky that they were busy with their own drama and didn't take it in their heads to rob me or worse... Goodness knows how the girl got injured, for starters. So I left, but I was worried enough to tell the people at the tourist office across the road what I had seen. They told me that they were always hanging around there, fighting and getting into trouble - the police came by regularly, but just left again. They didn't really seem to care, so what could I do? In fact, I went to the supermarket the next day and there were three or four of them (not sure if they were some of the same ones from the day before or not) in front of me in line, buying dozens of bottles of beer and wine. Judging from the conversation of the cashiers, this was a daily experience. Someone told me that there's been for quite some time a phenomenon in these parts of 'punk' kids who dress in a certain way (boots, cargo pants and so on), hang out on the streets drinking, and go everywhere with huge dogs on chains, and once I was told that, it's true, you see them all the time. It's really sad that in a country like France, which may not be perfect in terms of giving opportunities to young people, but that at least has a social safety net for those who will take it, that these kids can end up pretty much voluntarily living on the streets, begging and drinking themselves into oblivion. How did they end up like that?

Anyway, now that I've finished giving my mum nightmares, the rest of the afternoon went well, spent lying on a couple of lovely sandy beaches on the Atlantic coast (my first time, not counting Ireland where I saw the Atlantic but there were no beaches). By the time I got there, I only had a few hours on the beach, but it was very nice. I was planning a day at the beach today, and even to go for a swim, but I was very disappointed this morning to wake up to overcast, drizzly skies and a forecast that the whole day would be the same. :( I went out briefly in the morning, decided that I didn't want to go to a museum dedicated to St Nazaire's history as a naval port (ye gods!), so went to the train station and discovered that it was going to take all day to complete a journey of about 2 1/2 hours, owing to long stops in Nantes and Angers. Got to the train station at 10.45, set out from St Nazaire at 12.20, and finally made it to Tours at 6.05! Wasn't too bad really, read my book (Wolf Hall, proving a winner so far) and went into town for lunch at Nantes.

Good to be home, if a bit disappointed about the beach today and sorry that the holiday with R went so quickly. Looking forward to Porto with my friend Carolyn this weekend though!

Ouch

The nearly credit-card sized bruise I sustained from slipping in the shower. Feel like an old lady, just to literally add insult to injury... Please ignore the fact that my hand looks like it's destined for a glittering career as a furless seal body double in t' films. Had a big lump yesterday too, but that seems to have gone down overnight. Were the credit card not in the way, you could perhaps make out just to the right of the bruise the two scars I got on my leg when I first arrived in Nice, was staying in a hostel and got mosquito-bitten to the extent that I managed to scratch those scars into existence! Good times.

Anyway, must leave the house, it's almost 2 pm and I've been laying about in bed all day... My lovely friend Ruthie G arrives tomorrow (how is it almost a week that I've been off work already?!?) yay! Off to Nantes Saturday. :)

Prieuré de Saint-Cosme

Gorgeous day today! I walked out to the Prieuré de Saint-Cosme in La Riche Soleil, one town over (although it's really one continuous built-up area). This is a mostly-ruined priory that was founded in 1092. The oldest bits still standing (the ruined church essentially) date from the late 11th century. It is mostly famous because the poet Pierre de Ronsard lived and died there in the 16th century. He was dug up and reburied in the 1930s. It was occupied until the 18th century, but dissolved decades before the French Revolution, I think because of a lack of recruits or money or both. Sold off after the Revolution, it was used as a quarry and the site of market gardens, finally bought up again in the 1920s, when restoration and excavations began, then suffered bombing in WWII because it's right next to a railway line. So quite the turbulent past for what s now (or was today at any rate) a very peaceful place. I did see a handful of other people wandering around, but I was almost always by myself inside the buildings etc. (So was able to take self-timer photos without shame). Nice gardens, I suppose they might be even better in spring. Anyway, nice day out.



Saw this sign on the way to the priory, cracked me up. Just the way Johnny is written all jauntily and then you get the STAB. I wish my name were Johnny Stab...



A Zao Wou-ki vase - Zao Wou-ki (a Chinese artist who has lived in France for a long time) was commissioned to do new stained-glass windows for the refectory (the apparently unremarkable originals having been destroyed in WWII), and in honour of this there's currently an exhibition of other of works. He paints as well, apparently, but it was mostly porcelain stuff. Very reminiscent of Jackson Pollock and Kandinsky (not this vase so much, but other pieces), with an Asian air to it - I like.



Some of the stained glass windows



A view of the ruined church



Various ruins



Ronsard bears an unfortunate resemblance to the devil, although I'm not sure that would have hindered his ecclesiastical career as much as his habit of writing volume after volume of romantic poetry to different women



Ronsard's bones were discovered in 1933 and 'scientifically' (from the looks of this photo) identified as his



Inside the refectory



Me in front of the church



Moi among the ruins



In the hostelry, now a small Ronsard library. Gotta love how the inside of my elbows are clearly a different colour from the rest of me (it's a real tan, but obviously those bits get no sun!)



In front of the ruined church



Inside the church - new handbag btw



The cut flower garden



View of one of the gardens from inside the prior's lodge



The ruined 11th century church

And now we wait

Well, I'm reluctant to say that I had a successful trip to the Préfecture, because I fear this will be a repeat of yesterday when I thought "the cat hasn't pissed on my stuff for ages, she must be used to me or something" and then that very night found she had pissed on my newly-changed bed. (And the Préfecture would just love to metaphorically piss all over me I'm sure.) So let's say I had an untraumatic time at the Préfecture and we'll see where it goes from there.

Got up bright and early, same time I get up for work - mysteriously, had no problems getting out of bed first go, whereas it usually takes about 3 snoozes before I can drag myself up of a workday (and then I wake up more or less the same time on the weekend, sigh) - in order to get to the Préfecture when it opened at 8.30. Turned up at about 8.20 and the line was MASSIVE, down the block. There *was* a line, but then once the doors opened, everyone just piled in with gay abandon anyway, so being in the line was actually a dumb move because everyone not in the line just went around the outside. Luckily, however, 90% of them were there for a 'carte grise' which I think is vehicle registration, must expire at the end of the month I suppose.

Thus, not a long wait. Oh, I haven't said what I was there for - foreign types have a year in which you can drive on your foreign licence in France, then you have the opportunity to swap it for a French licence. If you don't do this within a year, you have to go through the French system, which involves tests (obviously) and compulsory 20 hours of professional driving lessons, which as you can imagine, is cher. I haven't driven here yet, nor am I planning to (poor parking skills, inability to drive a manual despite having taken about 12 lessons in one, fear of crazy Frenchies) but I think the opportunity to get my greasy mitts on a French licence should not be passed up.

Had anticipated problems owing to having a British passport and a NZ licence (I have an NZ passport too, but no visa in it obviously), but before we got to that whole explanation, the first hurdle was actually that the lady looked in a big book and was all 'no exchange for NZ licences' and I was all 'Mais, si' and then she sent me upstairs to someone else who confirmed that yes, there is an exchange agreement with NZ. Then he asked for evidence of my 'stay in NZ', at which I looked blank until he said 'to prove you didn't go there just to get a licence'. I say if you go to NZ for the sole purpose of getting your hands on a NZ driver's licence (and you're not a member of Mossad), you should be given special points for effort, not penalised. Anyway, waved my other passport and explained I was a New Zealander really, and that seemed to be that.

Sent back downstairs, sweet-talked the lady at reception into photocopying some stuff for me (only fair, I triple-checked the requirements listed on the website and it said nothing about bringing photocopies) and then dropped off my 'dossier' with lady #1, who at least had the grace to say she needed a new book (I imagine I'm the first New Zealander to ask). In and out in an hour exactly... So now, all that remains (supposedly) is to wait 2-3 months for my shiny new French licence! Complete with horrible photo, despite the fact that I primped myself specially for the occasion :( In reality, however, I'm waiting for something to come in the mail saying that, although I did in fact give them everything they asked for the first time, actually I also need to supply x, y, and z, which I don't actually have (carte de séjour, anyone?) Fingers crossed!

PS hey blogspot, Zealander is not a spelling mistake!

Photo fun

Well, I have nothing interesting to say really, but I do have quite a few photos - random shots from around Tours, my purchases from the last day of the sales today (no more shopping this month for me, or next month with holidays to pay for!) and the Bastille Day celebrations.





Video & photo of the Bastille Day fireworks down by the Loire. I like how everyone claps the fireworks!



One of my new dresses



And the other. My photo mojo was not there today - after about a million takes, everything was coimng out blurry or ugly or both. So when I put on my new bat-wing cardie, I decided it was time to get silly instead...



Secretive ninja



Pretending to be graceful



The crane



Attack!



Let's try that again, with a bit more menace



A la guinguette, a guinguette being an open-air café or dancehall. This is here all summer on the banks of the Loire, and there's various things like bands playing or dancing or games depending on the night.



People dancing at the guinguette.



St Martin's Church



Sainte Maure cheese. I won't do a cheesewatch on this, since I'm fairly sure I've said before that this is an utter marvel of cheeseadry and very unfairly unknown outside the region (well, to me it was anyway!). I just wanted to post the adorable little goat with her log of Sainte Maure on the label



I love how this old building has been preserved wedged in between two modern ones. I'm not sure what it is now, seems to have a garage in the lower bit (?)



This is where Joan of Arc stopped to get some armour made before going and fighting the English. And now it's a shop on the ground floor and what looks like empty apartments up above. Can you imagine living in Joan of Arc's old hangout? Europe, I love you.



And this is my gym, which looks like a 19th century drawing room with exercise machines in it. Presumably they actually restored it to look like this, as apparently this street, one of the main axes in Tours, was pretty much bombed to bits in WWII



Flowers I bought last week



I already knew that roosters went cocorico, but according to this butchery window in Les Halles, cows go meuh like a bored teenager...



Sheep do a French version of baaa, pigs... growl?, and rabbits go clap clap? Also, someone has written 'aie' (ouch), which you can see next to the pig, and on the pig (you can't see in the photo) someone put 'ce pub ment' = 'this ad lies'. Not sure if they disagree that rabbits go clap clap (I sure do) or if it's some animal rights thing? If you look closely, you can also see me!

Making friends...

...is hard to do. So far, I pretty much have my flatmate, who doesn't go out very much, the intern at work, who is making the transition to an outside-work friend hopefully (cos after next week she won't be the intern at work any more, and I will have no-one to have lunch with boohoo) and the guy I was dating but all signs point to that I am not dating any more (so no need for follow-up questions mother).

So today, for the third time since I got here, I went to this monthly meet-up organised by this girl I met one of my first weeks here. Usually up to a dozen people turn up, so theoretically a great place to meet people, right? And meet people I have, but moving past 'meet' to, like, actually talking to them is another story. When everyone sits around in a noisy bar and talks, I can follow maybe 50% of the conversation at best, so actively participating in said conversation is a challenge to say the least. So I just pretty much sit there most of the time and try to listen. So of course no-one's particularly into making friends with that weird girl who just sits there in silence all evening, right? Think back to the 'foreign' people in your life - quiet? shy? boring? My money's on they just bloody well couldn't fully understand what was going on, couldn't fit in with jokey banter, or didn't want to bring the whole conversation to a screeching halt while they took 20 minutes to formulate a sentence.

So yeah, things are tough. Tonight we at least went to a salsa evening. I was really bad at it, but at least I was bad on a mostly linguistically-neutral level. My problem is the same one I have with things like driving - once I think about it, I can't do it (and someone ends up dinged). It seems like it might be good for meeting people though, so maybe I'll go back next week.

On the way home, I had to look at a bloody map to get from the main square in the old town (Place Plum') to chez moi. This is like almost as if I got lost trying to get home to Queen Street on a night out on K Road (which I wouldn't put past myself either). Rub-bish!

After tomorrow (which brings with it an up to THREE HOUR web-meeting gahhh), one week of work to go! Yeah, I generally like my job, but as the hols draw closer I am totally counting down! Oh, and talking of linguistic issues, today my big boss asked me to explain an English term (Digital Humanities Workshop) to her IN ENGLISH and I totes failed. Trop embarrassant! Well, it's complicated, and I'm not 100% sure exactly what digital humanities entailed and I didn't really know which words she would know. Am now convinced that she thinks I'm just pretending to be a native speaker.

In which I have what Mum would call an adventure...

...and everyone else would call a pain in the arse.

So today I went out to the gym mid-morning in an effort to beat the heat, which worked nicely. (Full workout btw Mum, you were right.) Returned home about an hour before qualifying for the British GP was about to kick off, plenty of time to eat lunch and do some housework.

About 1.45, 15 minutes before qualifying, I was in the middle of cleaning my room and decided to take down the wrapping of the 5 or so parcels I've received in the last couple of days (preparing my summer reading via Amazon - it's just incredible that I can get a book sent from England to my door in France for 3 euros TOTAL! They're not all that cheap of course, but wow!) Anyway, there I was, still in my gym shorts and tee, slipped on a pair of sandals to go downstairs and fatally decided not to take my keys.

I think you can probably see what comes next. Yep, I locked myself out of the house. Once you shut our front door downstairs, it's locked, you don't have to turn a key. The dumbest part of this? As I made my way down the stairs, all I was thinking was "better not lock yourself out, what would you do then?" And then I evidently closed the front door behind me without a care in the world, because I didn't even realise I'd done it until I'd deposited the recycling and went to go back in.

So there I was, on the street, on another blazing hot day, with nothing but the clothes I stood up in. No cellphone, no money, no nothing, just the knowledge that my flatmate would be at work all day, on the other side of town, and I would die without water. So I decided to ring my neighbours' doorbell (who I've never met) and basically beg. This was pretty awkward... The lady who answered the door was super nice, she let me in right away and suggested I ring my flatmate (don't know her number) or the rental agency in case they had a spare key (the most I remember from writing my rent cheques is that their name is some kind of acronym). I was sitting there on her couch in my gym clothes, sweating buckets, it was fricking awful. Eventually, she figured out that I could ring my flatmate at work (good job her), and my flattie rang the former flatmate who has a set of spare keys, but no dice, he was out of town. So then I had to really awkwardly ask for money for bus fare. I said 5 euros, and I think she thought I might be scamming her at that point, since the bus fare is only 1.35 each way, so she gave me 3. Fair enough, obviously. I only said 5 because it was like 30 degrees and I knew I'd be thirsty, but I coped (I actually spent my return bus fare on a bottle of water cos my ticket was valid for an hour - although you're probably not technically meant to use it for a return trip).

Anyway, I was lucky enough to get a bus there and back without having to wait at all, and got the keys off my flatmate no worries. Once I got back to mine and was reunited with my handbag, I went and bought the neighbours a bunch of flowers at the convenient Saturday flower market for being so nice, which I think they really appreciated. In this day and age it does actually restore your faith in humanity a bit to know that someone would let a crazy, shabbily-dressed, sweaty foreigner they've never seen before into their house, let them use their phone, leave them unsupervised to do so, and lend them money, all with no way of knowing whether I would ever pay them back, or if I'd pay them back by robbing the place. So I hope by paying them back in money and flowers I returned the favour in that way as well. I also feel proud of myself, because once over I probably would have been way too shy to ask for any help, let alone money, and would have just walked for like an hour out to the flatmate's work. Travel = character-building.

Took me about an hour to take the trip out to my flatmate's work and back, thus I missed the whole of qualifying :( And to cap it off, Button's miserably down in 14th!