A taste of Italia (Italy, Part I)

The best part about adventures is that you never know where they’ll take you. If you’re open-minded and up for whatever comes along then that ‘whatever’ could be just about anything.

After a sleepless night I had my earliest morning for one of my adventures yet. 4:00am on Sunday – that is, 4:00am after a middle-of-the-night adjustment for daylight savings – saw me up and out of bed eating breakfast and dressing for the long voyage ahead. The taxi was waiting at 4:30am, and it dropped me at Place de la Porte Maillot on the west side of Paris. The metro doesn’t run that early on a Sunday. From Porte Maillot I took the shuttle bus to the budget airport at Beauvais, an hour north of Paris. Despite all my worrying and panicking, my carefully packed bag fit the weight and size requirements perfectly. The Ryanair jet was on the runway. I boarded my flight to Italy and we took off.

Flying around Europe is just like doing the same in Australia. Paris to Milano is about the same as Melbourne to Sydney, or maybe the reverse, since Paris is north of Milano. Because I was on a European Schengen flight there was no need for passports, no big boarding gates, nothing notable about the whole experience. Boring, but easy. Just like Melbourne to Sydney.

My friend Alessandra and her father met me at the airport. Alessandra was the reason I was here – she and our German friend Silvio study in Milan, and our friend Andrea lives in Florence, so after Alessandra’s suggestion I had decided to take my autumn holidays and come to Italy to visit my friends and see the country. Conveniently enough, Alessandra’s hometown is a place called Bergamo, 45 minutes north of Milan, where the Ryanair airport is located. We threw my bag in the back of the car and headed for breakfast.

They took me to a popular café in Bergamo, where Alessandra’s father ordered cappuccinos and something called a ‘cornetto a la crema’ for all of us. Turned out to be like a croissant filled with lemon cream which was really really nice, if a bit messy to eat. After our ‘typical’ Sunday breakfast we jumped in the car, out of the rain, and headed to Alessandra’s to drop off my bag. Alessandra tried to book a restaurant for lunch and to keep me amused she gave me one of her sister’s books to read in Italian, pausing every so often to correct my pronunciation. Thanks to my polyglotism I didn’t have too much trouble, and once Alessandra had told me the key pronunciation differences between Italian and the other Romance language it was just a matter of practise – and, of course, comprehension!

Alessandra’s dad dropped us at the funicolare, or funicular railway, which runs between the raised mediaeval city of Bergamo, known as the Città Alta, and the surrounding expansion of the modern city. A couple of minutes later we were standing on wet cobbled streets in what was clearly a very old place. We walked towards what was once the centre of the old city, where we visited the archaeological dig site of an old Roman city underneath the main cathedral, the cathedral itself and one other nearby. Then we headed off to a traditional Alpine lunch at a Bergamo restaurant.

I knew that being vegetarian on exchange would be losing a lot of the experience. What I didn’t entirely anticipate were the problems in finding something vegetarian to eat in Europe. The concept is almost foreign to them. While Alessandra asserts that Australians eat a LOT of meat, and while in the context of something like a barbeque it may be true that we consume a lot of it in one meal, Europeans feel the need to have a small amount of meat in almost every dish. So Caelli tried the traditional polenta dishes of the Alps, of which Bergamo sits at the foot, as well as the local mushrooms (which weren’t so yummy). Once we were thoroughly full, dry and foot-rested, we ventured out into the rain again. With the weather so inclement, we headed through the old town for a café famous for its creation of a particular type of ice-cream. Shaking off our umbrellas, we sat down at a table where we ordered Italian hot chocolates and HUGE servings of the tiramisu that the waiter had recommended. We spent another 45 minutes at the café trying to digest the tiramisu. Lesson #1 of Italy: Food is everything. EVERYTHING. Eating is like a sport here, so bring a good appetite.

Me and Alessandra outside the porta

As we headed back down from the Città Alta Alessandra showed me one of the huge old gates, or portas, that allowed access through the huge wall that surrounded the old city.  I’ve noticed a pattern with these walls.  Lesson #1 of Europe: We’re paranoid that everyone is going to attack us, so let’s build the biggest damn wall you can imagine to keep them out.  Sometimes, it even works.  We walked through part of the new city as we went from the bus stop to Ale’s house.  Alessandra’s grandmother was there when we got back, and guess what the first thing we were offered was on entering the door – yes, food!  We were both grateful for the warming tea, though we were both so full I couldn’t touch the pastries, lovely though they looked.  Another interesting cultural note about Italy: informality in meals is not tolerated.  Though it was only tea and nibbles, all five of us were seated around the table with placemats, cloth napkins and everything in its own little silver teapot or holding dish.  Food and food traditions are like a second religion here.

Alessandra’s sister Giulia arrived home, and I chatted with both the girls as we played with the cat Macchiolino downstairs.  Unlike her parents, and like her sister, Giulia also speaks very good English and was pleased to find that I spoke Japanese, since she’s a Japanophile and speaks it too.  Just before 6pm Alessandra grabbed our stuff and her dad dropped us at the station to take the train to Alessandra’s place in Milan for the night.  We didn’t get very far, though – the trains were on strike and her dad, Peter, ended up driving us the 45 minutes to Milano.  Still full from the day, Alessandra and I vetoed dinner in favour of water and introducing Ale to the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice before collapsing into bed at some very early hour.

Il Duomo, Milano

Monday started at a comparatively late hour. After packing our bags for later that day and eating a simple breakfast of tea and toast with strawberry jam made by her nonna, we set out for our tour of Milano.  First stop – Il Duomo.  Churches here in Italy are just insane.  In France they felt the need to build large, elegant religious buildings.  In Italy they felt the need to build large, elegant, elaborate religious buildings and then decorate them extensively.  The paintings on the inside of the roof were my favourite, and we were both creeped out by the tradition of placing beatified former bishops of Milano on display while they continue their path towards canonisation (it’s worth noting that the Diocese of Milano has produced two Popes in the past few hundred years).  When I’m 500 years dead, I sincerely hope to be buried and long since rotted away, not wrapped in gold cloth to disguise my decaying and put on display for tourists.

Teatra La Scala, Milano

We visited a couple more important places in Milano, like La Scala opera house, and Alessandra taught me one of the Milan traditions.  Placing your heel on the balls of the mosaic bull in the floor of La Galeria and spinning three times is said to bring good luck, so I stuck my gummy foot out for the honour and twirled around three times on the worn-in mosaic.  She also tells me that it’s considered good luck to touch the nose of the bronze statues of wild boars in Firenze…another one to add to my list!

We had lunch at a little bistro in Milano, where I discovered good Italian pizza the way the locals eat it, the story of the Margherita pizza and one or two other Italian specialties.  Afterwards Alessandra and I walked towards the castle for a little while before turning back and taking the tram home to pick up our bags for the metro ride to the central station.  We bought tickets and boarded the 5:25pm train for a little town called Desenzano del Garda, where Alessandra’s friend Fede would pick us up and take us to a little house on Lago di Garda, Italy’s biggest lake.

Chef Silvio (and his helper Alessandra)

It was dark for most of the train trip, so I couldn’t see much of the scenery.  We were greeted at Desenzano by a slew of purple and orange balloons and two bottles of Italian beer courtesy of Silvio, our German friend, a sure sign that he hasn’t changed! We piled into the car and drove ‘home’, where Silvio proceeded to cook a pasta dinner for Bei-Shi, Federica, Alessandra and I, followed by several games of Murder, Celebrity Heads and music videos on MTV, before we all collapsed into bed thoroughly tired.

I Am A Paris Sardine

The French are famous for their gastronomy.  Their best-kept secret, however, is their sardines.  The Parisians do them unbelievably well, but they keep them well away from the tourists.  I am not a tourist, though.  I am the newest Paris sardine.

I'm not, of course, talking about fish.  I'm talking about public transport. The RER, as the suburban train system, is rarely used by the tourists who stay in the city centre.  Instead they travel around on the metro, which, while it gets fairly full around peak hour, is still respectable and dignified.  The tourists never see the chaos that occurs in Chatelet-Les Halles and Gare du Nord around peak hour.

It's like the running of the bulls in Spain.  I've come to the conclusion that a good day is one in which you don't get killed.  Don't get me wrong - as a general rule I love Paris public transport, and the fact that I can get from my apartment to uni in one hour through morning peak hour is great.  The trains run every few minutes on both the metro and the RER, there's heaps of coverage throughout Paris and the suburbs, and the authorities actually do an amazing job of moving hundreds of thousands of people every day.

That said, moving that many people has its problems...like the people all want to be moved at once.  When a train pulls up you nearly get trampled by everyone behind you who wants to get on the train.  Even if you don't move to avoid trampling the person in front of you, you get squashed by the people behind until the whole thing's just ridiculous.  The flux regulators, as they're called, have their work cut out for them trying to let an appropriate number of people onto each train and closing the doors to stop the trains getting too crowded.  They take some flack for it, too, but it's an important job.  After all, someone has to stop people being hooked in the throat by a cane (seen it), accidentally frogmarched into the gap between train and platform or just plain squished underfoot!

For me the biggest problem is my foot - my legs are slightly uneven thanks to the boot, so when standing still, which is an awkward exercise at best, I stand only on my left foot, and often stick my right foot out at an angle.  It has the dual purpose of giving footsie a rest and also alerting others to my crippleness.  This doesn't work so well when you're 10-deep in people and no-one can see your feet, of course...I'm terrified that one day someone's going to shove me while we're playing Sardines on the trains, and Peg-Leg Caelli will go tuuuuummmmmbling to the ground and get trampled.  I can just imagine the headlines back home...

The other day I took the metro home from Sorbonne and changed at Chatelet-Les Halles to the RER.  I've never done it in that direction before, and I don't think I will again.  I like it on my way to uni, since it cuts out most of the long metro trip and still drops me just a short distance from Sorbonne, but doing it the other way means I catch all the stairs at Chatelet (instead of the escalators!) and I prefer to walk to Port-Royal RER and walk home from the station in Le Bourget.  It's good exercise and I have the time to do it after class - plus, it saves me a side trip to the boulangerie on my way home!

The other fun public transport story I have comes from my trip home from Germany.  At the station at Saarbrucken, in Germany right on the French border, I noticed a bunch of police without borders waiting for the train.  It was only when I saw them on the train that I realised their uniforms said 'on', not 'without'...border patrol!  This was the first time I've had my passport checked on an international trip - I've used it on trains before, but usually just as the required piece of ID to go with my ticket.  One of the officers announced in French (oh, sweet, blessed language after two days of minimal comprehension in Germany!) that it was a border ID check and please prepare your passports, and he began at my end of the carriages while his mates checked the back.  The officer was pretty thorough, too.  He looked at the information page of my passport and then flicked through to have a look at my visa.  Given I might have been on a short holiday and not had a visa at all I was surprised and impressed that he checked, though why he insisted on performing the niceties in German (which I did understand, by the way) even though I replied in French I will never understand.  Multilingual people are just strange.

Ville de Luxe and Deutschland - photos

Lower Luxembourg from the Bock casements

Looking down towards St. Michael's

The northern side of the casements

The square white-yellow building on the right is the hostel

Luxembourg from the Bock casements bridge

The Luxembourg Grand Ducal palace

Waiting for the Prince and Countess after the civil wedding

Views of Luxembourg while bushbashing

The Petrusse Express road train

The river looking towards the casements

Walking along the river beside St. Michael's

Basilica of St. Castor, Koblenz

Castles along the Rhine

The view from the front of the boat

Towns along the Rhine

Me with a castle - who knows which one!

A stopping place on the Rhine

Waving goodbye to Jeff and Laura

Welcome to Sankt Goar!

Koblenz at night from Festung Ehrenbreitstein

The elevator to the Festung

Views of Koblenz

Daises at the Festung

The cable car from the Festung to Koblenz

Goodbye, Koblenz HBF!

Ja, Deutschland ist sehr schön

I never thought I'd be glad to see France and Paris, but I was when I got home last night.  I guess Paris is home, where I've made myself comfortable, but it was also getting back to a culture with which I was familiar.  Here, I know how to buy a train ticket, I know how to buy a croissant, I know where to find a good hot chocolate, I know what to say when I enter or leave a shop.  It's remarkable how much I've learned in the part several weeks.
 
So yesterday morning I was out of the youth hostel by a quarter past seven to take the early-morning bus to the station for my connecting train to GERMANY!  It was a lovely two-hour train trip from Luxembourg along the Moselle River to Koblenz, in the north-west of Germany.  Arriving around mid-morning, I made the slow walk towards the centre of town and dropped in on the tourism office before moseying on over to where the Moselle meets the Rhine, in the tourist centre of Koblenz.  I was slated to join a cruise along the Rhine at 2pm, so I had some time to spare.  After a walk through the Basilica of Saint Castor and a quick lunch on the Rhine it was time to buy my ticket and board.

In trying to find at which pier to board the cruise ship, since the lady at the desk liked giving out wrong information, I made myself some new friends.  Newlyweds Laura and Jeff from Georgia, USA, arrived at Koblenz HBF (Hauptbahnhof, or train station) around the same time I did, but for once I decided not to introduce myself to the token English speakers, though Jeff said later that it looked like I wanted to.  The three of us did some laps of the Rhine waterfront before finally discovering the right pier just a few minutes before boarding and settled ourselves on the starboard side of the upper for'ard deck.

If you ever get a chance to, take a cruise on a river in Germany.  It was amazing.  We don't have rivers in Australia like there are in Germany, and it's interesting how it's informed the landscape and the culture.  Sailing down the river is like driving down the main highway of Germany - everything was built around it.  The Rhine winds through a long valley with tall mountains on either side, and towns have sprung up on either side of the river, with the Rhine supplying trade, food, tourism - whatever was needed.  The architecture is different too.  Most houses are whitewashed townhouses with exposed timbers, and to make up for the lack of gardens, certain areas of town are fenced off and allocated as gardens for townspeople to grow whatever they like.  And atop every hill, overlooking the town below, there's a schloss, or castle, more than you can possibly count.

I went as far as the town of Sankt Goar, about three hours upstream from Koblenz, chatting and laughing with Jeff and Laura along the way.  It really was a kind of magical experience, watching the imposing natural and man-made landscape slowly slipping past you on each side.  Like I said, I stepped off at St. Goar and waved goodbye to Jeff and Laura, who were continuing on to Bacharach for the night.  I spent half an hour wandering the township, which is right across the Rhine from its sister town St. Goarhausen, before the cruise ship going back to Koblenz arrived in St. Goar and I boarded for the trip back.   I decided to eat dinner on the ship, since it was going to be past 8p by the time we arrived in Koblenz and I neither wanted to be hungry all night nor try and find some dinner between disembarking the ship and making my way to my bed in the youth hostel.  After downing some spaghetti pesto, I sat on the upper foredeck wrapped thoroughly in my coat to defend against the wind and watched the night-lit German towns slip by in the darkness.

On arriving in Koblenz, I managed to make my way to the main bus depot from where I could take a bus to Ehrenbreitstein, the suburb of Koblenz across the river where the youth hostel sat within the Festung Ehrenbreitstein, the town fortress. I easily made the 8.30 bus that dropped me off outside the fortress on the west side of the Rhine.  My feet spared the walk so far, I decided to put them to the test in hiking up to the fortress, since I figured the funny elevator-thingy going up to the Festung would be closed at this time of night.  My feet didn't appreciate this decision, and neither did my dinner after a steep walk up some dark stone steps onto a road that I hoped was leading me to the youth hostel.

It did, in the end, but my sweaty self was in for another surprise.  Lesson #2 of Youth Hostelling: ALWAYS confirm your reservation before you arrive.  As the lovely young fellow on the desk soon discovered (also, one for the planning books: 'sprechen sie English?', meaning 'do you speak English?' is a wonderful phrase to know whilst in Germany), while my reservation email had been received, no-one had felt the need to act on it or reply!  Furthermore, the hostel was full that night and he couldn't even squeeze me in without a reservation.  Instead he called down to a cheap hotel at the base of the Festung, which was able to squeeze me in for the night.  My mood didn't improve when the desk guy (who was pretty pissed about the reservation thing on my behalf) gave me directions to the hotel that included 'go down in the elevator' - apparently it's automatic and runs all night and day!

Long story short, sweaty, backpack-laden Caelli, too tired to be disgruntled like she should, ends up in a dingy hotel that was more expensive and not nearly as nice as a youth hostel. I didn't really have a choice - the chances of finding another cheap hotel that was still open and accepting guests at half past nine pm on a Sunday night that could be reached by cripple-foot or bus were slim.  I decided to make the best of things and, curling up on the dubiously cleanliness of the excuse-for-a-pillow, went to sleep.

The next morning I dragged myself out of bed, cleaned and dressed myself and packed my bag to head down to breakfast.  Suffice to say I've had better breakfasts in youth hostels - in fact, this under-did the worst youth hostel breakfast I've had.  Having lost my drink bottle the day before, too, I drank deeply of whatever funny juice the woman there gave me and got out of there as quickly as I could.  I bought a ticket for the Great Glass Elevator and headed on up to the Festung.

It wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped - it's a fortress, after all, so it's been damaged and rebuilt several times and was actually blown up entirely in the 1800s.  Most of what can be seen on the inside of the fortress is only 200 years old and the insides of the buildings have been renovated to make them museums, youth hostels or administration, mostly.  The views of Koblenz were spectacular, though, I'll credit that.  After looking through the main areas within the large, confusing Festung walls, I wandered right out to the viewing platform at the tip of the Festung grounds before boarding the Seilbahn.

The Seilbahn is a cable car/skyway thing that operates from the Festung Ehrenbreitstein to the Rhine waterfront in Koblenz.  For five minutes I got the most beautiful overhead views of the river and eye-level views of the town buildings in Koblenz.  It's another must, just for the views.

By this point in my trip I was getting pretty tired from several poor nights' sleep and all the travelling and walking, and I was definitely about done with Germany for the time being, so stopping for some postcards along the way, I headed back to the HBF to buy the next cheapest ticket to Paris there was.  It took a little conceding and clever thinking on my part, but we managed it.  Within an hour I was on a train to Saarbrucken on the border with France.  The little regional train spent two and a half hours winding on a land-bound version of Sunday's cruise through the Middle Rhine valleys.

I got around about two hours in Saarbrucken, but due to an intense fear of missing the TGV to Paris at 7pm, an inability to walk very far and a further inability to find anything exciting in walking distance, I ended up staying pretty close to the station, and wound up in one of the cafes having a bagel and hot chocolate for dinner.  A few minutes after the departure time, as the night started to descend and the wind started to get cold, the TGV pulled up, dropped off its old passengers and set off for Paris.  Two hours of sleeping, reading (but mostly sleeping) later I was home, if that's what Paris is now, pulling into Gare de l'Est, and within 40 minutes I was back in my own little apartment back in Le Bourget, tired, a little jaded, but having seen a little more of the world.  In conclusion, my little weekend away has once again enforced the 1st Rule of Life (According to Caelli): sleep.  It will all seem better in the morning.

Royally beautiful

It's the best-kept secret in the world.  That's handy, because it's beautiful but tiny, and too many tourists would spoil this place.  The relative quiet and low-key atmosphere is one of its charms.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Luxembourg, the historically-confused Franco-German country squeezed in between France, Germany, Belgium and just about every other place in Europe.  I arrived here at midday yesterday, and fell completely in love within 10 minutes.  It's an incredible city - it manages to combine ancient history with pastoral country with metropolitan chic and does it remarkably well.  The city centre is quite small - in fact, so is the whole city.  Melbourne's rural cities like Ballarat or Bendigo are easily bigger.  You could be forgiven for not realising that you're in one of the European capitals.

Anyway, the actual CBD is quite small and you can walk from one end to another within 20 minutes, easily.  The city itself spreads out further, with the station down south and more museums and shopping around to the north-east.  It's much more sprawling than French cities, though, probably because it's more like Australia, population-wise, than France.  As a result they've kept the city's history and incorporated it into the modern city.

Luxembourg is built on several different levels - that is to say, it's far from being flat ground.  I'm staying in the old part of town, known as the 'ville basse' - lower city - as opposed to the ville haute, or upper city.  That's not to say there's only upper and lower.  The city goes up and down and up and down and up and down and the streets do too.  Your legs get a good old workout here.

Yesterday afternoon I went exploring the Bock casements.  Of the old fortress of Luxembourg, two major parts still exist - the Petrusse casements and the Bock casements.  The latter are on the bridge between the youth hostel and the city, so I paid the small entry fee and went in.  You can look out either side of the bridge through the (barred) openings all along the length of the bridge, which is built over the top of the fortress casements.  It's a real rabbit warren, and I had to take care - I wouldn't like Luxembourg nearly so well if I broke the other leg here!

It currently sounds like the whole city is under seige by the loud explosions overhead.  In fact it's just fireworks, and though I'd love to see them I think I'll stay inside, since they're very close and very loud.  The fireworks are part of the celebrations that have been going on ever since I got here.  The weekend is the marriage of - let me see if I can get this right - Son Altesse Royale, Grand-Duc Heretier Prince Guillaume et la Comptesse Stephanie de Layonne - His Royal Highness Prince William, Grand-Ducal heir of Luxembourg, and his fiancee, the lovely Countess Stephanie.  The Luxembourgers are loving it - this is their own Prince William and Kate story, and they're totally into it.  Apart from the usual concessions that come with such an event - concerts, road blocks, etc. - every shop window in Luxembourg city has a glossy press photo of the couple reposing on a red velvet cushion, half the Luxembourgish flags on the streets have been changed for ones with a big curlique 'G', and the whole city are carrying Luxembourg flags with a picture of Guillaume and Stephanie in a loveheart superimposed over the top.  The whole thing is really kind of cute, though I confess the fixation of the whole city was just a little annoying at first.  Also, turns out there are five kids in the Grand-Ducal family (and two adorable grandkids, too).  Everyone, look up Prince Sebastien...

Today I jumped on the tourist bus that tours Luxembourg City and just explored a little, spending a little time at the Botanic Gardens.  When I climbed off at the stop for the Museum of Modern Art, I think is was, I didn't even notice the museum.  I only had one day, and I wasn't going to waste it in a museum when there were plenty more back home.  No, I saw a trail.  A trail leading down from the road into the little woodsy area through which we were passing.   Bushbashing in Luxembourg.  OK.

I ended up on another road lower down and followed it for a while, eventually ending up what I later discovered was the Tour Malakoff, or Malakoff Tower.  It's not very tall and was (presumably) locked up, but I did climb the outer stairs to stand on the balcony.  The views of Luxembourg were stunning.   Picturesque simply does not begin to describe this place.  I wandered a ways further down the road to the Maison Schumann before I turned back for the climb back up the hill.  Earlier this evening I also took a walk along the nearby river, having finally figured out how to get to the lower level of the city (like I said, maaaany levels).  There's a beautiful stone church on the other side of the river and someday I'll find a way across there to have a look.  I think it's called the Church of Saint Michael and it's the oldest church in the city of Luxembourg.

This afternoon I took a ride on the Petrusse Express.  It's a little road train (as in, it has tyres, not just wheels) that goes for an hour-long trip through some of the older sections of the city.  I was in the front carriage with five Dutch guys who are here for the weekend.  We had some good fun looking at all the scenery we passed and laughing at the somnolent passengers in the second carriage (as well as all the usual joshing that boys do).  It was great fun and spared my poor feet a little.  Horace is getting some serious mileage on him.  Come January he'll be good for nothing but scrap parts.

The wildlife here is also interesting - the bird life along is freaking me out with their strange imitations of Australian feathered beings (like magpies...).  I did have some encounters with some land-bound ones today..well, mostly landbound.  During my little ramble in the woods on the edge of town I came across a red bouncy thing with a bushy tail.  If any of you have been put in mind of Scamper in Enid Blyton's Willom Farm series then you're right on the money.  My first ever European squirrel.  I was much more interested in him than he was in me - then again, foraging for nuts or human - what would you choose?  There was also what very much resembled, and therefore may have been, an otter swimming in the river while I was out walking this afternoon.  Though I've seen them at the zoo, of course, this was my first wild otter, which was kind of exciting.

Time for me to go to bed, I have a train to catch early tomorrow morning to another exciting and mysterious location...in the meantime, if everyone could start redirecting my mail to the Luxembourg GPO, it will make things much easier until I can buy a house here.

Sorbonne sketches

I am afraid, dear readers, that my posts are destined to become much fewer than they have been up to now.  As time goes by, those things that were so novel at one time become more routine and less remarkable.  That's not to say there aren't still innumerable little cultural observations to be made.  I could, for example, write a short discourse on the topic of smoking, as it is viewed in France, and I'm sure at some point I shall.

Or perhaps language - it's remarkable the mixtures of languages and dialects that are used to communicate here.  My friend Aida caught me after class yesterday, and it was good to see her again, along with her friend Pili. Aida and I were discussing how much we understood of what happens in class - an ever-increasing amount, though not as much as the French students, I'm sure - and suggesting that we should compare notes and help each other as much as we can.  We speak mostly in French, as all the exchange students do, for it is our only mutual language, but more and more Aida and I inject Spanish into our conversations, for sometimes Aida doesn't know the French word and I recognise the Spanish one, and of course I'm always glad of a chance to practise with a native speaker.  Being from Barcelona she also speaks Catalan, which fascinates me - it's like Spanish and yet not like Spanish, and she occasionally uses a word or two to amuse me.  This is common among my friends - though French and English are the main languages, we insert German, Spanish, Portuguese or any other language as appropriate until we're all speaking some kind of Exchange Student Creole!

I also think I proved to my Miracles teacher yesterday after three weeks that I'm not the dumb fool that I might appear in class.  I tend not to speak for fear of confirming the 'fool' part by my inferior French, and for the most part I have nothing to say anyway, since I don't know the methodologies, the texts or the literary context at all.  At one point yesterday, though, the teacher was encouraging the class to make a connection with a certain passage in the text, and I struggled to explain that I recollected a Bible verse, likely from Matthew, that seemed to relate to the passage in question.  After floundering for a minute it became clear this wasn't the answer the teacher was seeking and I stopped talking.  Instead I pulled out the copy of the New Testament we all have for class and found the verse I was thinking of (Matthew, right enough!) and showed it to her at the end of class.  The strong mutual references to lilies and glory in both the Bible verse and the passage in our text as well as the matching themes of the two seemed to please her with my grasp of intertextuality.  Win for the Australian exchange student!

My new umbrella got a workout today - I went to the 5th half an hour early and took a wander to a cheap shop I remembered seeing there, where I picked up a nice little blue and green fold-up umbrella.  It seems to rain every second day here, which is trying coming from a place where rain is unusual enough to be a novelty, but rain as often as it appears here is more of a trial - one's appearance is constantly disheveled, one's shoes are always soaked and one has a constant feeling of dampness until one can remove their coat and shoes.  The umbrella was a wise choice - sure enough, it began raining during class and I had need of it on the way home.

I'm in the process of planning my next adventures around Europe over the next two months...indeed, my next one starts tomorrow!  I won't say where I'm going, though...I'll save the surprise for the next exciting post from anther exotic location!

Student life

So the other day I decided to do something different, just for a change.  I have three ways of getting to Sorbonne: I can take a bus from my apartment to the metro at La Courneuve and ride line 7 to Censier-Daubenton near Sorbonne; I can walk to the station in Le Bourget, take the RER to Chatelet-Les Halles and change to line 7 for the trip to Censier; or I can take the RER all the way to Port-Royal and walk to Sorbonne from there.  Until now I've been taking the metro all the way, since walking is minimal and it's very convenient, though a little time-consuming - travelling two-thirds of the line takes around 40 minutes.

I made a fortuitous discovery last weekend, though.  When visiting my friends at Martin's house I discovered that it's only 20 minutes from Le Bourget to Denfert-Rochereau, making it less than that to Port-Royal or Luxembourg, the stations nearest Sorbonne.  Accordingly, on Wednesday afternoon I walked the 10 minutes from my apartment to the station, bought a ticket and hopped on the next train into Paris.

Less than half an hour after I'd left my apartment, I was standing outside Port-Royal RER station in the south of Paris.  All that left was to find my way to Sorbonne.  It turned out to be a longer walk than expected - around half an hour, though that may decrease as my mobility increases.  I found Sorbonne easily enough, but my next task will be to look out the shortest and easiest route there - I think next week I'll try walking south from Luxembourg rather than north from Port-Royal.  I also tried option two yesterday, changing at Chatelet-Les Halles, but it's the biggest metro-type station in France and just walking between the two platforms took a good 10 minutes.

Classes are getting better - my brain is now more used to hearing three hours of chatter about the Bible and raising Lazarus from the dead in French, so I'm understanding more of my classes and the structure of the courses and as such feeling a little more comfortable all in all.  I will say, though, that I will be eternally grateful that I did (most of) my degree in Australia and that I'm still officially an Australian student.  Not a lot seems to happen in classes around here and how much learning gets done I still haven't figured out.  At least during my insane number of contact hours at Monash a large amount of information was imparted into my brain.  I'm beginning to see that organisation, efficiency and burearucracy are three things for which you should never hire a Frenchman.  Anas is totally on my side, too.  He's already wondering why he left Switzerland for this, which made him laugh when he remembered I spent a day and a half on planes and moved halfway round the world for this.  Sigh.

History of French orthography is still my favourite class.  Once I finally arrived today (bottleneck at Gare du Nord, my RER was held up for 45 minutes or so) we were discussing writing systems - Sumerian compared to Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Hebrew - and how they each expressed language, i.e. pictures versus representations of sound, and how well each system worked.  This culminated in an explanation of why French is such a hard language to learn, specifically because every grapheme (written thing) has multiple pronunciations and every phoneme (spoken thing) has multiple transcriptions.  It sounds very similar to history of English classes - "Our language is just generally screwed up!"

I had an argument with Paul today.  It turns out that we both finish class at 11 on a Friday, and since I don't see any of my friends regularly anymore we took the opportunity to hang out.  This ended in us agreeing to reserve judgement on which is the best Disney movie until we've each had time to view the other's nominees (I have to watch Robin Hood, he has to watch Tarzan and Beauty and the Beast).  We also came to the conclusion that Paul's antipathy towards The Lion King may be due to the poorer quality of the German version, a theory we'll have to test.  There may also have been some extensive quoting of Finding Nemo around this time.  We ended up in the middle of a Park League soccer match, too - the bench we were sitting on at the park near Sorbonne was frequently looped as the kids chased the ball out from behind or underneath us - that is, when Horace doesn't take matters into his own hands and just bounce the ball back (yes, it did bounce off me once or twice).  It was hilarious watching how intense these six-year-olds were and trying to figure out which tiny soccer star was playing for which team.

It's now definitely bedtime.  Tomorrow I'm going into Gibert Jeune again for another textbook and hopefully meeting some friends for hot chocolate, not to mention starting to plan and book some of my trips over the next few months...I love having a four-and-two-half-days weekend!

Ups and downs

I've developed a love/hate relationship with France.  My mood goes from one extreme to another depending on what new cultural idiocy or idiosyncrasy the day hands me.  One moment I'm depressed by the gloomy Parisian weather, the next I'm as pleased as the cat that got the cream on finding a fast way in and out of the city.  Today was one of those days.

I was in a real funk all morning, wanting nothing more than to curl up in bed with a large pile of Lindt and Pride & Prejudice, even though I had to go into the city to buy my books for class.  Didn't want to.  I was in a real funky funk.  But my sense of duty wouldn't be denied, so I pulled on my crumbling backpack and took the RER to Saint-Michel, just south of Notre Dame.

I heard about this bookstore called Gibert Jeune from the other exchange students as the place to buy cheap books in Paris.  I looked it up online - there's about seven stores scattered around Place Saint Michel, each with a different area of specialisation depending on the type of books.  I was still in a bit of a funk when I arrived, and this didn't improve when I couldn't find any of the books I wanted in the main store, and none of the others seemed to fit the bill.  Eventually I asked the clerk on the third floor where I would find the books on my list.  "Oh, they're livres de poche ('pocket books')," she said.  "You'll find them in the Pochotheque on the next floor."

It was like entering another world. The funk vanished. The whole floor of the bookstore was filled with livres de poche, like Penguin Classics in English, but with better covers. It's all alphabetical, and if there's anything you can't find just ask the staff. They can put their hands on any book with 30 seconds (I speak from experience) and if there are none on the shelf then the pull one from the stock in the cupboards just behind the bookshelves. It's a pretty neat set-up. The best part about Gibert Jeune is it's a combination of a new and a used bookshop. Any book with no markings or stickers on it is 'neuf' - a brand-new book - and those with an orange sticker saying 'occasion' are second-hand, and therefore cheaper. I found most of the books I needed and then got so distracted by the pretty orange stickers that I had to grab a basket. I forgot why I usually avoid bookstores. Oops. You can see the results below.

I had just left Gibert Jeune and was heading into the metro station (which accesses the RER station) when I found my second treasure of the day. I could hear music coming up the stairs of the metro as I descended. Buskers are pretty common around the Paris metro, and some even jump on the trains with their violins, piano accordions or portable microphones and speakers to serenade you on your way to work or class. Most of them aren't that great and are easily ignored. But this one was different.

It looked like a collaboration between one of the two girls I'd seen as I passed through the metro earlier and two guys who had come to take their place when they left. The girl had a violin, one of the guys had an acoustic guitar plugged into a mini amp, and the other guy was sitting on what looked like a large speaker that turned out to be a digital drum kit (where you touch the speaker and with how much pressure determines the type and volume of drum). They were doing an improv instrumental piece between the three of them that was so good it drew a crowd of people, something I've never seen in the metro before.

When they finished, to a loud round of applause, the girl and her partner packed up and left the space to the two guys. I stayed and listened for a while longer. I think I stood there for about half an hour with my huge bag of books and feet sore from standing. I have no idea if the boys were playing from memory or just improvising too, but the choice of chords and the poignant melodies were so lovely that I couldn't help but smile. It was even nicer because they looked like they were genuinely having fun too, and the whole experience made me feel a lot lighter. I was glad I had the presence of mind to grab my camera and take a video. So, guys, if you're out there, c’était absolument incroyable, merci beaucoup pour aviver mon journée.

I got back from my cycling weekend away yesterday.  Sunday went pretty well - I caught a taxi to Chateauneuf-en-Thymerais after breakfast, where I was able to pick up my official press pass and make my way up to the GreenEDGE team bus to introduce myself.  I left the team around 4pm in Tours and made my way down to the press room in the mairie (town hall).  The presence of a tiny, young-looking journo with two big bags on crutches raised a few eyebrows, but with my nice shiny press pass around my neck no-one tried to stop me.  I grabbed a seat in the press room and got stuck into my article for Peloton Cafe, taking a quick break to listen to the interview with race winner Marco Marcato.  It wasn't until the second question that I realised the language he was speaking was Italian (and being translated into French for the journos), since I was writing down the key words in both languages regardless!  Polyglot much?

I left/got kicked out of the press room at 7.30pm and headed down the street to where I could take the bus to the youth hostel.  It was several minutes late, but it was the right bus and I was able to buy a ticket without any trouble.  The driver told me when I reached my stop a few minutes later, and I thanked him and got out.  Even though the street sign told me I was in the right place - rue Bretonneau - I couldn't find number five and saw nothing that looked like a youth hostel.  The couple I stopped on the street to ask directions put me straight - I was on rue Bretonneau, The Suburbs, not rue Bretonneau, Tours.  The husband kindly drove me back to Tours and walked me to the door of the hostel to make sure I got there safely.  And before anyone starts lecturing me about accepting lifts from strangers, it was 8:15pm on a Sunday night and I was on a street far from where I was meant to be, on crutches with no discernible way of getting back, and I've found that it's usually less of a risk when the strangers in question are a kindly older couple who remind you of your grandparents.

Absolutely starving, I dropped my bag off in my room and headed out to find somewhere to eat.  Thankfully there was a whole slew of restaurants nearby, and I parked myself in one of them with some tagliatelle and Tyler Hamilton's new book The Secret Race, which I'd downloaded in Macca's the night before.  Heading back to the hostel, I spend the rest of the evening trying to re-send my article to Jarrod, since my email account had apparently gone on the fritz.

I was up early on Monday morning, checking my computer, packing my bag and having breakfast.  At 8.30am I took my room key downstairs to check out and asked directions to the Tourism Office for my bus tour.  Being too far to walk I was going to have to take a bus, but I was beginning to cut it fine.   Thankfully a bus showed up to the nearby bus stop by quarter to, and by the time I'd gotten off in the centre of town and walked to the Tourism Office it was five to.  But here's the catch - apparently my 'reservation' wasn't a reservation after all!  My bus tour wasn't booked!  The lady in the office made a few phone calls and was able to get me a space on one leaving that morning at 9.30am, and I thanked her profusely.  I was taking a trip to the chateaux of the Loire valley.

I actually really enjoyed Amboise Castle.  Most of the original castle has been pulled down - just two small wings remain, the edge of the foundations and one or two other buildings, like the lovely little chapel where Leonardo da Vinci is now interred.  The gardens are really stunning, but I didn't have time to explore them.  By the time I'd seen the chapel, admired the view of the town and the river over the castle walls and walked through the main building, we'd run out of time and had to meet the bus.

Our second and final stop for the day was Chenonceau.  Some of you might be surprised to find you're already familiar with this castle - remember that giant white chateau in last year's Tour de France coverage that was stretched over the river Loire, like a house build on a bridge surrounded by beautiful gardens?  That's Chenonceau.  It was a beautiful day, misty, cloudy, and raining a little by the time we reached Chenonceau - just lovely.  I'm not being sarcastic.  It's easy to love things when the sun in shining.  Everything looks so pretty and romantic in the golden rays that you fall in "love" with everything you see.  If you can appreciate something in miserable weather then you've really and truly enjoyed yourself instead of just being swept away by the sunshine.  In fact, the misty rainy greyness of the day added a lovely element of wistful nostalgia that you simply won't experience when the sun is out.

I didn't like Chenonceau as much.  The big draw of Chenonceau is its architecture, its unique location built right on top of the Loire, and you can't see that from within the castle.  Inside is standard Fancy Old Western Building - tapestries, paintings, decor, sumptuous four-poster beds, the kind of stuff you can see anywhere.  What I really wanted to enjoy was the view of the chateau over the water, and no matter how much I hung out windows I couldn't really get a good look.  If you really want to visit Chenonceau, then take a helicopter flight over it or a boat trip under it.  Walk through the chateau, explore the gardens and the maze, but make sure you see the castle face-on if you can.  I felt a little like I'd missed the point of the trip for not having had that experience.

I bought my train ticket home at the Tours station and had lunch, followed by hot chocolate, in a mall not far from the station.  It was an easy, two-hour trip home on the TER, the slower regional trains that are cheaper than the TGV.  My plants missed me while I was away - did I mention that I've also adopted some miniature cyclamens that I'm naming Cecilia 1-6?  I'm slowly clearing all the junk that's accumulated in my room, and continues to accumulate, since I moved in and am finding homes for all my genuine acquisitions, like books and fridge magnets.  This place has an unmistakeable mark of 'Caelli' on it now.

For Kiri, after our little discussion

Departures and arrivals at Paris Gare Montparnasse

Double decker train to Chartres

Me at Amboise

Leonardo da Vinci's grave

Looking out on the town of Amboise from the castle

The chapel of Saint Hubert at Chateau Amboise

The chateau

Looking at the chateau from inside the chapel

The grounds of Amboise

So turns out I'm also terrified of suits of armour
(along with mannequins, heights and garbage trucks...)

Amboise from behind

The sweeping drive of Chenonceau

Chenonceau from the landward side

The Great Hall at Chenonceau

Looking across the Loire at the castle

The outbuildings and gardens

The castle from the second floor

There's 12 books here and I got change from 50 euros.  Not bad

Studies of everything

So I'm writing this from my hotel room in Chartres, staring out the window at the city as I sit on the bed. I'm sure for most of you this then begs the question: what am I doing in a hotel room in Chartres? I'll get to that in a moment, but before I start in on the chaotic but momentous events of today, I need to provide an account of my first week of classes at Sorbonne, which is now a good day overdue (and not looking likely to happen unless I do it tonight!).

My uni week starts on a Wednesday afternoon. My free time so far, of which I admit I've had a fair bit, has mostly been given over to administrative tasks - shopping to stock up my wardrobe, kitchen and pantry; completing documentation for France or Sorbonne, slowly; and generally acquainting myself with the city, not to mention a good deal of cycling work. I put all this aside on mid-morning on Wednesday and headed into the 5th, since classrooms would be published in the foyer of Sorbonne during the first week. I checked my classroom and then headed across the road for lunch, since I was starving. I was also a few hours early. Given I have no idea how anything operates around here, I've deemed it wise to allow plenty of extra time for important things like trains and classes - where possible, at least.

I dropped into the bank to pick up my new bank card, visited a few shops that I'd been interested in around the 5th arrondissement, and still had an hour or so to kill, so I headed for my favourite hideout in the 5th, Saint-Medard, for a little while. Finally it was getting close to four o'clock, so I tripped back to Sorbonne and headed to the classroom number indicated. Of course, when I wrote my timetable in my notebook, I should really have noted the class NAMES next to the codes. I had no idea which class I was walking into!

It became evident pretty quickly that I was in the literature/culture class called 'Sacred Miracles, Profane Miracles' (yes, they explore the oddest concepts in their classes at Sorbonne - much more delightfully eccentric than Monash!) It also became evident that the girl next to me had as little idea as I did of what was going on - yes, an exchange student! Aida hails from Barcelona and had two other Spanish friends in the class too. But wait - there's more. It turns out the lovely Swedish-born Ana who studies in the US while her family lives in the UK was, obviously, an exchange student. I suspect there were more than just the five of us, too. We made it clear to the teacher that we were all exchange students (and therefore have mediocre French and little to no clue of what was going on), though the teacher was unyielding on the methodologies that the French students learned in earlier years of their degrees and which would be needed for our assessments. None discouraged, we all headed home, where I cooked up a late dinner (three-hour class finishing at 7pm means I get home a little after 8) and called it a day.

Thursday started a little earlier - classes started at 2pm. After my usual morning tasks I packed my bag and raced out the door so I wouldn't be late to class. It wasn't until I got to the metro that I realised my problem - having left at 11.40am would get me there by 1pm, not 2pm. I took the opportunity to head to the CROUS canteen and have a leisurely lunch by myself, re-reading Paul Kimmage's Rough Ride which I'd finished the day before (and yes, I'm aware I'm a very fast reader!) Stopping for a hot chocolate at the uni canteen, I was a little late for class, mostly because I wasn't sure which of the two Spanish classes was mine and I was a little too terrified to ask anyone - assuming, that is, that anyone I could have asked would have known anything.

Spanish class was kind of unexciting - the teacher spoke beautiful polished French for the first half of the class as he explained assessments, requirements and so on. When he finally did switch to Spanish, having described a curriculum that sounded like everything I covered in first year, he handed out a small excerpt from a Spanish novel that even I found a little difficult. Even in class here they send mixed messages. Again, I made sure to inform the teacher that I was an exchange student, etc., and though I'd imagined that this would be the one class where my French ability wouldn't matter, since we'd all be in the same boat (more or less) when it came to our Spanish, I guess my imagination needs a tweak. The grammar textbooks that he recommended were all based on French (hello, Schaums' grammars!) and even the vocab explanations were all given in French!

I ran into Lisanne as class ended - she was in the same Spanish level but the class after me. I had to run, though, since I had another class directly after, thankfully also on the third floor. I had finally found the room, or so I thought, when a face jumped out at me - Paul. I hadn't seen him for a week either, but I had no time to chat - I had to get to class. Upon finally realising that the door opened inwards (oops...) I was thankfully only a minute or two late, to be expected in the first week. At least I was doing better than the cinema kids who all wandered in thinking it was their class...

The teacher was lovely - one of those vibrant, happy people who just never seems to get down. She gave us a short quiz designed partly to give her some weekend reading material but also to see how much we knew about French literature (oh, the class was Contemporary Narrative Fiction, by the way). I wrote on my quiz that while I could hold my own on the topic of contemporary English-language or Australian literature, I knew nothing about contemporary French literature and was here to learn. I had a little trouble following a lot of what was said, maybe because I was feeling really tired and the lovely teacher really was speaking very fast. I gave her the standard speech after class about being an exchange student, not having a brilliant grasp of French and therefore being a slow reader, and Sabrinelle, who apparently has a very unique name even in France, seemed quite pleased to have an Australian student and was very sympathetic with my potential difficulties, telling me not to hesitate to raise my hand and ask for help if I was struggling. Reassured, it was home again for an early night before Friday morning's class.

Friday started at 7am, definitely not my favourite time to start the day. I was out the door by 10 to eight and on my way to uni, arriving with just enough time to check my classroom and be waiting when the preceding class finished and ours filed in (8am class? Really?). I liked this teacher almost from the get-go. She spoke very clearly and not too fast, and even as she outlined the course I was getting excited. History of the Orthography of the French Language, before I forget. It seemed surprisingly popular, too, as more and more people kept filing in until we ran out of chairs and tables. Our teacher seemed a little taken aback, but simply told us to make sure we were enrolled so that our marks would officially count. We got straight into it, examining a copy of a letter from George Sands to Gustave Flaubert in which Sands made three of the 'orthographic errors' about which he was so vocally critical in others! Also, you've got to love a class whether the teacher gets distracted and goes off on a tangent about regional accents in class, using students to give examples as well as incorporating the accent of her native region following a discussion about....I can't remember what. It was all fascinating to me, though, since I know the English-language equivalents of most things we discussed (like the first known written record of the language - the epic Beowulf in English, in French the Sermon de Strasbourg) but the French is a whole fascinating undiscovered country. This is definitely shaping up to be my favourite class.

I dropped into Carrefour again on my way home, picking up some things that I can get at Franprix in Le Bourget and some notebooks and folders for uni. Spending the afternoon in more of the administrative tasks (and preparations for Paris-Tours this weekend), I headed out again around 8.30pm for the RER station. Martin had invited some people over for pre-drinks before heading out to a party, and since his nearest metro station had turned out to be also an RER station that was 20 minutes away on my line, I wanted to catch up with my friends. The walk from the station felt as long as the train trip, though (but that could just have been because I had no idea where I was going) and I was nearly ready to kill Martin when I arrived at his building to be told his apartment was on the fifth floor up five flights of rickety wooden stairs!

I made it without dying, though, and I saw Paul and Lisanne as soon as I walked in the door. The other two people there quickly introduced themselves, Simone and Chris from - you guessed it - Germany! The language was therefore a strange hybrid of English, French and German - Martin in particular would speak in very rapid German, insert a three-word sentence in English without pausing and then use a French word for something else a minute later. They were also very amused by my gobsmackedness at how much they knew about random aspects of Australian or Anglophone culture - I'm aware that English-language music is very popular in Europe, but knowing Green Day and Oasis on the guitar or singing Red Hot Chili Peppers word perfect - really? The bit that really floored me was that Chris was acquainted with Waltzing Matilda - and then, before I could blink, he goes on to reference Midnight Oil's Beds Are Burning! I feel so culturally ignorant only knowing Anglophone culture, music and history.

Now as towhy I'm in Chartres this evening and not catching up with the Germans at Nuit Blanche before the early night I always want but never get, it began with a phone call. Well, several phone calls, actually, which I slept through at 7am today. I was blissfully asleep until almost 9 o'clock, when I got out of bed and sat down at my computer with a bowl of cereal. I logged on to all the usual suspects - Hotmail, Facebook and Skype, for my morning convo with Down Under, though no-one seemed to notice I'd come online for our usual weekend phone call. I started reading my emails while I waited for them to return to the computer and accidentally came across what Mother had been calling to tell me.

On a whim, Mum had asked Jessi Braverman, Orica-GreenEDGE's press officer, if I could ride with Joachim the soigneur in the GreenEDGE team car for Paris-Tours as part of the official media contingent. Jessi consulted the GreenEDGE DS for Paris-Tours, Lionel Marie, and amazingly Jessi came back with a yes! The catch was that Lionel wanted me at the race start an hour early. Unfortunately Chateauneuf-en-Thymerais is nigh on inaccessible by public transport, hence I'd already dismissed the idea and was heading to the race finish at Tours. There were no buses from the nearest town, Chartres, before midday and in fact no trains to Chartres arriving before 9:30, either. This meant that I needed to stay the night in the area so I could make my way to Chateauneuf early Sunday morning. An examination of my press pack also revealed a list of team hotels, so with some quick internet work I lined up a train to Chartres, a room in the hotel where GreenEDGE would be staying, the bus tour I wanted for Monday morning in Tours (I already had a hostel booked for Sunday night) and a train ticket from Tours back to Paris.

Anyway, it took me too long to get to Gare Montparnasse and buy a ticket to make the 3pm train, but by then it was a short wait for the 4pm. One note on the trains - double. Decker. Wicked cool. Naturally I chose the upper level, crutches and all. After a misty ride through rainy, condensation-obscured Eure-et-Loire, I descended the train, to use the French term, at Chartres and headed for the bus stop. Successfully finding the right bus, I boarded, bought a ticket and got out at the stop the driver indicated, following the directions he'd given me to find the right street. The woman he was talking to was correct - it was a long walk, but the misting rain didn't bother me too much.

The hotel, when I found it, wasn't snazzy, but it's clean, perfectly adequate and warm and dry. Dinner was the ever-so-sophisticated Macca's next door - not fancy, I know, but it was close and they even did vegetarian for me!  So far no sign of GreenEDGE, though I can see the Saxobank and BMC team trucks across the road from the hotel in a warehouse yard. Anyway, if not beforehand then I'll see them at the race start in Chateauneuf-en-Thymerais once I've picked up my official press pass! Keep your eyes peeled for a post from Tours tomorrow night or else the race report and/or articles to appear on Peloton Cafe the following morning!