Finally, from France

30 March 2008

So comps are over, and I’m in Paris. I’m more than a little sure that this trip was a really bad idea. I didn’t really sleep all week because I just kept thinking about the work I could have been doing instead. I finished the last of the hellish questions on Friday at 11:45, just in time to start worrying about this silly talk that my advisor thinks he wrote for me but that really is still waiting to be written. You’d think that since I’m able to blog, I’d be able to write the talk right? Well, despite it appearing to be 9:15 right now, my body is really quite convinced that it’s 3:15, meaning that I’ve been up for 22 hours now, after a week of not getting enough sleep… I guess that about wraps up the reasons that this is a bad idea. I’ve got about another 2 hours to wait for my flight to Montpellier, where I will have the pleasure of figuring out how to get myself from the airport to Sete. If I manage, I’m going to stick my feet in the Mediterranean then go to sleep, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop me. After that, if I figure out how to work the alleged free wireless internet in my room, I’ll post this. Otherwise, I guess it’ll get updated, and the whole thing will get posted when I get home.

Oh yeah… the Paris aeroport sucks. It’s filthy, there are not even close to enough chairs, and there’s nearly no food on the concourse, a fact they could have told me when I was walking past about fifty restaurants before I went through security and got stuck on said concourse. I highly recommend avoiding it. Or maybe I’m just grumpy.

31 March 2008

Yup. I was grumpy. But I’m not so much anymore. I was also correct that Paris sucks in every way. Also, the alleged free wireless connection? Not so much free. It’s 10E for three hours. The dollar being what it is these days makes that not worth it for blogging purposes. Anyways, I’ll try to start the update from the beginning…

In addition to being filthy and crowded, Charles de Gaul Aeroport also sucks because everything has a technical problem. About half of the monitors that should have been giving me information about my flight were just plain broken. Also, there were constant announcements about flights delayed for technical difficulties. I was seriously considering whether I wanted to get on a flight in an airport with so many, and my concerns were justified when I got on the plane. The pilot announced that we were going to be delayed for about ten minutes for repairs. Turns out it wasn’t anything they needed anyway, and we just left without fixing it. Sounded like a questionable decision to me, but they got me to Montpellier on time, so who am I to judge? And miraculously enough, my luggage got there with me. The task of getting from there to Sete was not as bad as it sounded when I was stuck in Paris and trying to stay awake. Turns out that my French skills are passable enough for ordering sandwiches, directing taxi drivers, and buying train tickets. I was going to wait for the bus to the train station, but it was going to cost me two hours because of the scheduling, so I sprung for a taxi. Or I let the grant spring for a taxi. Driving here is interesting. I am quite convinced that I’ll die in a French taxi before I get a chance to post this, so I guess it begs the question of why I’m still typing. I got to the train station with what seemed like plenty of time. Then I saw the line. I got to the front about six minutes before my train. I asked if it was possible to get my ticket and make it to the train, and the woman said yes she could do it. I damn near hugged her, but decided I should try English and make sure she’d understood me correctly before I got too excited. Turns out she had. She sold me the ticket, and I ran for the platform. Down to three minutes at this point you know. Well, that would have been plenty of time if she’d given me directions to the correct platform. I got there and things didn’t look right, so I asked someone. I was told that the platform was not listed on the ticket, but that I could check a monitor… at the other end of the platform. So I went. And I was right. Wrong platform. I ran my giant suitcase back up the stairs and down the correct ones with about three seconds to spare. Or so it would have seemed. Moral of the story: don’t be fooled, some stereotypes are actually correct. The French really do have a rather informal relationship with time. Even the trains. But I waited, and it came, and I got on, and I made it to Sete. One more frightening cab ride, and I was comfortably in my room. Showered and napped, I was even sociable enough to go out to dinner with some of the group. I drank a lovely bottle of wine with a German professor. Last night he was impressed by my drinking skills, but this morning he pointed out that he hadn’t bothered to ask me what I do. I told him, and he said he had a student doing similar stuff. And then he offered to let me come over and play with their fancy tanks and ROV. All I have to do is get myself there. So connection made, trip not such a bad idea after all. Of course, my work is species specific. They don’t have it in Germany, and I’m pretty sure there would be legal issues with bringing my own. Still, good contact. I’ll continue to think of possible ways to use it. My talk is tomorrow, and I skipped dinner with the group in favor of a sandwich in my room over my slides (How American!).

In anticipation, a few answers:

1. How is it possible that I’m writing blog posts in France, so very far from my ancient desk top?

Mom bought me a laptop for my birthday. Not all of it. I’ll pay her back for my share if I ever recover from the absurd exchange rate. And I like it very much. Dude, I got a Dell. Sadly, I had no choice but to get Vista instead of XP. I’m not loving it, but I think it’s just because I’m not used to it yet. There’s a chance that it’s not really as bad as everyone says. Incidentally, my advisor coughed up a laptop that I didn’t know he’d been sitting on for nearly a year about five minutes after I purchased the thing.

2. Is French wine really all it’s cracked up to be?

There seems to be a local favorite called Muscat. It’s a locally grown, distilled wine that is popular as an “apparatif”, which means it’s served before the meal. It’s terrible. It’s a syrupy sweet white, sweeter than any wine I’ve ever tasted, and I’m just not sure how much more I can drink before I insult the entire region. Otherwise, I haven’t really sampled enough for a definitive answer, but it seems so, yes. American wines are full of preservatives, and we pay the price in taste. Side note: “Preservatif” is the French word for condom. Try very hard not to get these confused in conversation.

3. Did they let me keep my knitting needles on the plane?

Yes. In the US, knitting needles are on the list of allowed items, and I knit while watching chic flicks instead of sleeping because people kept walking past and bumping my arm and waking me up. I’ve heard that in Europe they are not allowed, but they let me through security. I was afraid to take them out on that flight, but it was a short one anyway.

1 April 2008

Talk over. I can’t really say how it went. Being the lone non-modeler giving a modeling talk to a bunch of modelers, all I know is that at least my shirt was not tucked into my underwear like the guy who talked after me.

After lunch I mentioned that I was planning to jump in the Mediterranean at some point, and suddenly I had several followers. We just got back from our dunking, and it was fantastic. Cold, but fantastic. We estimate about 10 C.

Other observations on France: it’s covered in dog poop. Seriously. People do not clean up after their little sweater weating rats at all! I think every single one of us has stepped in it at least once already.

3 April 2008

Spent the evening on a glass bottom boat and then at dinner. For 6 hours. Seriously, we arrived at the restaurant at 7pm and finally paid the bill at 12:50am. It may have been the worst service ever. But the company was fantastic. Across the table from me was a rather charming and famous (in certain circles anyway) German professor (not the one from Sunday) and his wife. He was quite a character. The whole night he told stories about his Beatles cover band and what it was like to do science in East Berlin before the wall came down. Interesting stuff. Every time a new bottle of wine came to the table, he picked it up, poured me a full glass and exclaimed, “Now everything is going to be all right.” In a thick German accent of course.

7 April 2008

Home, and still working on the recovery. The rest of the week wasn’t all that interesting, but more contacts were made, and I learned some stuff. Also had a lovely afternoon exploring Sete. Hiked up the “mountain”, shopped in town, etc. I’m glad I didn’t have a lot more time to spend sightseeing because there simply aren’t that many to see.

The trip back was less unpleasant. We left the hotel at 11am, and got to wait for our flight with the German professor and his wife. They are endlessly entertaining and so very adorable together. The layover in Paris was only barely long enough to get to our next flight. We made it to the states around 7pm and home about 10:45 thanks to an extended stay in Customs. Not me, I got through just fine, but had to wait for the rest of the group. The professor I was traveling with, and who was very generous to give me this opportunity by the way, is also the boyfriend’s advisor. She managed not to say anything unprofessional to me until we were about 3 minutes away from my house. It was an extremely awkward 3 minutes of her asking inappropriate questions and me giving blunt and uninformative answers while the others in the car sat silently trying to come up with a good way to change the subject, but at least it was only 3 minutes and not the whole week. When we got home, it was nearly 5am in the time zone I’d woken up in that morning, but I decided that I needed people who were neither snooty nor French more than I needed sleep, so I met up with the crowd at the VFW.

And now, despite sleeping all weekend, I’m still not fully recovered. I’m getting closer to normal, but my body still thinks that 5am is time to get up and 8pm is time to go to bed, and I’m not doing a very good job of convincing it otherwise.

And now some pictures because I was too lazy to put them in the post above...

The view from my room

A jellyfish in Le Bassin De Thau

The view from "the mountain", which is really just a very large hill. But still, it's steep... my butt was sore for the trip home.

Me and the giant octopus statue. Seriously, I like cephalopods more than is probably healthy, but these people are creepily obsessed, even by my standards.