Sometimes You Just Need a Day Where You Don't Change Out of Your Pajamas

After a full week of travel, I decided to take this day for a little rest and relaxation. Jackie and I Skyped until about two in the morning France time last night, so I was still a bit sleepy when I woke up this morning, but I had to run over to the Carrefour and get some essentials for the week; I cleaned out most of my shelf in the fridge before I left. Being the supremely lazy person I occasionally am, however, I just pulled yesterday's jeans and my UVa hoodie over my pajamas, threw my feet into a pair of flats, and walked to the store.

Since Jackie asked in passing how the food in France is, I figured I'd tell you a bit about the kinds of things I eat here. My staples are strawberry yogurt, eggs, and Spanish clementines, which are all relatively cheap and healthy. Today I also bought a small baguette, water, and tomato soup; I didn't feel much like cooking. I keep peanut butter from the States in my room, and I still have most of the grape jelly my mom sent me, so I had PB&J baguette for both breakfast and lunch, and a cup of yogurt and a clementine as a side in each meal respectively. I just finished a bowl of tomato soup for dinner tonight, and I'm glad I bought it, because it was delicious. Nothing all that exciting, to be honest, but after a week of excitement it was nice to just be boring for a day.

Not much else is happening. I spent a good hour today watching the first big gymnastics event of the year, the American Cup, and Gabrielle Douglas, who is fast becoming one of my favorite gymnasts, got the highest score out of anyone, even though technically she wasn't competing because she was the alternate. Such a night and day difference from her performance at Nationals, though, so I'm really happy for her. Tomorrow I'm going to read and do some internship applications, since I don't have to go to class, and maybe take a walk if it's nice out. Other than that, I have an inexplicable urge to watch Disney movies in French and paint my nails. Yeah, I can be pretty boring sometimes. :)

Entertainment 2012: February 1 - February 29

Books
1. Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares (new read)
2. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (new read)

Movies
1. North and South (2004 mini), new, quite good, though it suffered from a lot of the same problems the book did
2. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, rewatch, bittersweet
3. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, rewatch, still good but sad in retrospect
4. Anne Frank: The Whole Story, new, well-made
5. La Vie d'une autre, new, predictable but nice (at least the parts I was able to understand)
6. The Parent Trap (1961), mostly new, slightly campy and good God, Hayley Mills does a terrible American accent, but decent enough
7. The Parent Trap (1998), rewatch, VERY similar to the original, I now realize, but I still love it because I grew up with it. Natasha Richardson, Dennis Quaid, and Lisa Ann Walter are genuinely good, and I thought Lindsay Lohan was better in the lead role than Hayley Mills was. Yeah, come at me.
8. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, new, and in French, so I probably missed a lot of the funny parts, but better than I thought it would be, which is pretty much how I felt about the last one, too.
9. Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front, new, frankly not that great, though the little girl who played Emily was good
10. Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, new, charming
11. Felicity: An American Girl Adventure, rewatch, fun, made me want to read the books again although I know they're written at an elementary-school level
12. Samantha: An American Girl Holiday, rewatch, legitimately good and probably the best of the American Girl film series
13. Stranger Than Fiction, new, only really paid attention to some of it, but interesting concept, especially as someone that loves the writing and storytelling process
14. Zombieland, mostly new, not a fan of even fake gore, but funnier than I thought it would be

Leap Day in Deutschland

Really nice day today. Raquel and I got up around 9:30 and left for Munich (or, as it's known here in Germany, München) at 11. We had a pleasant two-hour drive on the autobahn, which involved listening to a lot of music and going at speeds that are frankly impossible in California. Fun fact: in certain places, there is no speed limit on the autobahn. The first time I heard this, I was astounded, and I thought German highway patrol would be up to their eyeballs in car wrecks, but actually, having experienced it for myself, the system seems to work pretty well. Raquel also pointed out the exit signs, the German word for which is "ausfahrt." She mentioned that when she arrived in Germany, she was astounded at the size of this great city, Ausfahrt, because there were signs for it everywhere. Then her husband pointed out what it actually meant. Frankly, it's an easy mistake to make, and I laughed when she told me that she's seen t-shirts with legends like "Ausfahrt: the biggest town in Germany" and the like (Urban Dictionary backs her up here).

Thank you, Google Images!

We got to Munich at one o'clock on the dot and headed over to the Alte Pinakothek, an art museum (my sixth in Europe so far, hells yeah), which houses, among other famous works, Albrecht Dürer's Self-Portrait in Fur Coat and The Four Apostles, and Leonardo Da Vinci's first painting, Madonna of the Carnation. Raquel mentioned she had never been to an art museum like it before, and she seemed to enjoy the experience. She really liked Hieronymus Bosch's work; I promised to show her The Garden of Earthly Delights before I went back to France. Working in the art history department comes in surprisingly handy!

Also, for the Doctor Who fans, behold François Boucher's Madame de Pompadour!

After a couple of hours, we decided to head out, though we weren't nearly done with the museum; we wanted to get to Dachau before the concentration camp memorial site closed. We grabbed some sandwiches to go at a bakery on the outskirts of Munich (mozzarella and tomato seems to be a favorite throughout Western Europe, which I appreciate very much as a vegetarian) and hopped back on the road. Dachau, as it turns out, is not very far at all from Munich, and twenty minutes later we were parked and walking onto the memorial site.

The front gates, with the motto "Arbeit Macht Frei"

It was a very strange feeling to be there. I've been surrounded by World War II lately; I'm taking a class on Winston Churchill, my Aftermath of Wars Since 1990 class mentioned post-World War II propaganda in passing, I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, and shortly afterwards I watched a well-regarded miniseries about her life. But, as the Anne Frank House taught me, there's an emotional distance between reading something and standing where the players have stood. Walking into Dachau felt chilling. I couldn't imagine how anyone could possibly deny the Holocaust happened; I stood in the room that had once been a gas chamber and saw the ovens and the barracks with my own eyes. Dachau wasn't even an extermination camp; it was first intended for political prisoners, and apparently few people were gassed there. But Raquel and I went by at least three memorial stones representing the thousands of people who died of illness, starvation, overwork, and execution, and down an avenue where all but two of the barracks had been torn down, but the foundations were left in their place. It was very quiet, very sad, and very real.

There was a chapel on the property; we lit some candles in honor of the victims

We left just after closing time. On the drive back to Grafenwöhr, Raquel, who had been sneezing all day, went downhill fast. I felt her cheek; she was burning up. I was sorry I couldn't volunteer to drive (apparently I would need a special European license for that), and glad when we finally got back. We went to have dinner with her friends Alex and Jason, both soldiers in the Army like Raquel's husband, at their house, where Raquel could take it easy. Alex made a pizza from scratch - he's a really good cook.

After dinner we sat around in the living room and watched Zombieland. They offered me a German beer, but I didn't like it, so Raquel made me a drink with pineapple juice and some coconut rum. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, though I drank it very slowly and only after having had dinner. I'm paranoid about getting drunk. I think I may have had my first real buzz, though. I'm not sure if I really liked it, but it wasn't necessarily a bad feeling, just unusual. I noticed that I did slur my words a little toward the end of my drink, so I don't think I'll be repeating this often, but it was an interesting little experiment, and I'm glad I tried it at a house just hanging out with people rather than at a bar or a wild party.

We ended up crashing at Alex and Jason's place; Raquel says their couch is more comfortable than her bed, which helped her get some much-needed rest when she wasn't feeling well, and they had a spare room for me. Raquel mentioned that she was pretty sure we were going to have to cancel Prague; I was disappointed, but I saw how miserable her fever was making her, and knew it was for the best. And really, even though we aren't going to the Czech Republic, my time in Germany has been fun so far, Raquel getting sick aside. I'm glad I decided to pay a visit.

This is What a Seven-Hour Train Trip to Bavaria Feels Like

I woke up this morning in Paris. Once again, I hadn't gotten much sleep, this time because just as I was drifting off at around nine, I saw something black move behind the dresser. Because the lights were out, I couldn't tell if it was a cockroach or a mouse, but it freaked me out enough to stay awake. I kept the TV and the lights on, watching increasingly odder things as the night wore on. Did you know you can find Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman dubbed in French at 11 PM? There was also an unintentionally-hilarious sci-fi B-movie about aliens and the same loop of news running over and over again, mostly about the awards The Artist won at the Oscars. Around 3 AM I finally got over my fear of whatever scurrying thing was behind the dresser sufficiently enough to go to sleep, though not enough to turn the lights or TV off. Still, considering my severe lack of sleep, I was up, packed, and ready to go well before I needed to be, and I got to the train station with plenty of time to spare.

Ever since my mishap on the way to the Netherlands at the beginning of the month, I've been hyper vigilant about train travel. I triple-check my tickets and the platform number, even when I know I'm on the right train, which makes me pretty anxious. Luckily the platforms were announced well in advance of departure in both stations, and I had no trouble finding the correct trains. The journey from Paris to Frankfurt was uneventful; I slept, listened to A Way with Words, and read about Bavaria in my guidebook. Still, I had a knot of worry in my stomach all throughout the Frankfurt-Nuremberg leg of my trip, because unlike on the TGV from Paris, I could not understand for the life of me what the announcer was saying. Apparently he was using English in addition to German, but his English was utterly incomprehensible (rather like my French, I'm afraid). But since I knew I was on the right train and the German name for Nuremberg is not especially different from the English one, I figured things out readily enough. When I got to the Nuremberg train station, however, Raquel was late, and the cell phone number I had for her was missing a digit, so there was no way I could contact her. Calling my parents helped me to keep my head, and eventually Raquel and I found each other, so all's well that ends well.

We walked around Nuremberg for a bit and then drove to Grafenwohr, where she lives. Her husband is currently deployed in Afghanistan, so I'm more than happy to keep her company for a few days. Some of her friends dropped by at dinnertime, and they were very nice. They do swear rather a lot, but I have to keep reminding myself that I'm a mildly sheltered preachers' kid and they're in the Army, and really, I got along with them well enough in spite of the differences. Tomorrow Raquel and I are going to Munich and Dachau, which should make for an interesting day. Prague on Thursday!

Nostalgia Trip

So, like roughly any other girl I went to school with, I grew up reading the American Girl books. While I never owned a doll, I loved the stories, which were about brave and resourceful young ladies growing up in different eras in United States history. When I was little, Samantha was my favorite; now that I'm older, I might like Felicity best. I even had the completely hilarious in retrospect computer game, American Girl Premiere. In any case, I know that when I think about these books, I do so with a nostalgia filter firmly in place.

During the past several years, I found out that there have been movie versions of some of the stories, sweet, inoffensive films I enjoy watching when I come across them. I saw the Felicity movie when I was still living at home, and the Samantha movie shortly thereafter, but it wasn't until this weekend that I finally got around to seeing Molly and Kit. Some are better made than others; Kit's was the only theatrical release, with an appropriately laudable cast (Abigail Breslin of Little Miss Sunshine as Kit, with supporting roles played by Stanley Tucci, Joan Cusack, Wallace Shawn, and Julia Ormond), whereas the rest have been TV movies with generally lesser-known stars. After having seen them all, I think Molly's was probably the worst. She was played by Canadian Maya Ritter, and while I certainly have nothing against Canadians, it's a little jarring to see a movie set in a heavily patriotic World War II-era United States that was obviously filmed in Canada with a mostly Canadian cast, the younger members of which have not been taught the U.S. way of saying "sorry," for example. (Though I must admit, I do rather like the Canadian way, and always grin when I hear Gilbert Blythe using it in the Anne of Green Gables films). As for Felicity and Samantha, I think I need to watch their movies again to decide which I liked best. I do remember, however, that Felicity is played by Shailene Woodley, who would go on to star in The Secret Life of the American Teenager (cringe) and The Descendants (which is actually getting her a lot of buzz), and Samantha by AnnaSophia Robb of Bridge to Terabithia fame.

If you happen to feel as nostalgic about these books as I do, I have included links to all the trailers for your viewing pleasure: Samantha, Felicity, Kit, Molly. It's been a lovely weekend for a nostalgia trip; I hope you feel similarly.

Discoveries

Hey there! You may notice some mysterious updates from the past, mostly Downton Abbey reviews, start to find their way onto my blog. I shall say only this: I was working on a class project most of the week, there are certain days when I have no creative energy, and goodness, can Blogger's posting system be slow. Pay no attention to the retroactively blogging man behind the curtain.

Anyway, in lieu of a newsy post, here are some things I have discovered in my second month of living in France:

• Carrefour baguettes should really be eaten within two days of purchase. There is only so much a healthy slathering of Nutella can do to save stale bread.
• Making sure your phone isn't dead before you go somewhere can be very helpful. It can lessen the stress of an accidental train ride, and it can help you avoid awkward conversations in terrible French with other people's landlords.
• Always buy your fruits and veggies at the Wazemmes Market.
• Spaghetti can be delicious with mixed veggies instead of sauce, especially when prepared as outlined in your vegetarian cookbook.
• Train trips to Germany are super expensive. Gah.
• On the other hand, train trips to Disneyland Paris are not.
• Putting your small suitcase in front of your door will stop Demon Cat from forcing his way into your room at six in the morning, like he did on Wednesday.
• Staying up until three in the morning to watch the new episode of Switched at Birth is a bad life decision, especially when you're only doing it because you're bored.
• It is surprising how much you can get out of a movie even if you only understand about half the dialogue.
• French movies use a lot of English-language songs.
• Mushroom pizza on a baguette is pretty much the best thing ever.
• Churchill class is awesome when you know you've made a favorable impression on the instructor.
• If you drop your pastry on the street, the 10-second rule still applies. Just pick off the dirty bits and you should be fine. I haven't died yet.
• As gross as it is to pick up after your dog when you're taking him for a walk, it is infinitely more gross to have to constantly sidestep the business of other people's dogs. Seriously, France, how hard is it to take a grocery bag with you and just take care of things then and there?
• Spending day after day in cold and cloudy weather has made me appreciate El Centro's warmth and sunshine far more than I ever expected.
• Planning a vacation with your mother is actually really exciting, though it is a lot of work.
• Skype is a lifesaver.
• Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I miss UVa so much, and trying to find a way around a six-hour time difference is much harder than I thought it would be. On the other hand, nine hours between Lille and California is not as inconvenient as I expected. Basically, though, I wish I had my friends around.
• To end on a positive note: The past two weeks have been good ones for making new friends. :)

Checking In

This will be a short post. I just wanted to mention that I have been losing myself in fiction lately, which is why my poor lonely blog has been neglected this week. Downton Abbey has briefly consumed my life; I was up until nearly four last night and the night before watching it. As you might have guessed, this means I owe you about fifteen blog posts, which will be written; I have to retroactively fill up unused days with something. There will also be a review of John Green's new novel The Fault in Our Stars, which was achingly beautiful, hilarious, and sad. I don't usually cry when I read books, but oh boy did I cry when I read this one. Also, I find it very fitting that I read it within a week of my visit to Amsterdam. Anyway, expect this blog to turn into review central soon.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that this is the time of year when I'm prone to feeling sorry for myself. I know you must be sick of hearing about it, and it is rather pathetic, but sometimes I just get so upset over being 21 and not having had a boyfriend yet. I really want to get over it already - I went to therapy about this, for heaven's sake! - and I realize writing self-pitying things like this doesn't really help. I guess I wanted to let you know that if I seem a bit down, it's because I'm rather sick of our culture's obsession with romantic love, and its tendency to label those without it as incomplete. Or maybe I'm sick of the readiness with which I buy into that notion anyway. Well, in any case, I shall be cheerful enough again soon. Just prepare yourselves for sarcastic Aida, and know that she'll hopefully be herself within a few days.

Okay, Downton Abbey! Reviews! Until later!