Scott Chilberg • France
I am writing this while on a ferry from Santorini to Crete. In other words, I’ve left Nantes, and along with it the family who has generously hosted me these last four months; the many friends that I’ve made and other great people I’ve met; the university and the program center where I took classes; the boulangerie where I bought a demi-baguette and a tartine chocolate several days a week and the countless others that I frequented for the more-than-occasional pain au chocolate; the bus that I took to and from class every day; the big fountain that served as a meeting point for going out on weekends or a backdrop for an afternoon espresso or vin chaud; the dark, cheap, student-filled bars where many a night began and the loud, packed, stylish clubs where many a night ended; and the endless other things that I did not realize I was going to miss until I was already missing them.
Based on my last several posts it may seem like Nantes was just a place where I left all my stuff while I was checking out the rest of Europe. But it was more than that. That city served as a temporary home, a place where I learned a lot more than French. I learned, among other things, how to be content without being busy; how a warm, chewy baguette and a jar of Nutella can be all it takes to make me temporarily but completely happy. And that a lot of the time that’s enough–those intermittent moments when I’m fully immersed in something that I love without thinking about what’s coming next. I learned a lot about myself too, about what I like and what gets on my nerves and what lies outside of my comfort zone, and probably a lot more that I won’t realize until I’m back home.
Thanks to finals and packing and all the stuff that I put off until the last possible moment, my last week in Nantes didn’t have the resolution that I would’ve wanted. I didn’t say goodbye to a lot of people, I never took any pictures of myself with my host family, I didn’t get one final night out with all of my friends, and I didn’t have time for reflection on what this experience has meant and what it means for it to be ending.
And maybe I’m in denial (which, considering I haven’t booked my flight home yet, is a very legitimate possibility), but, despite the sentimental tone of this post, those thoughts are far from my mind at the moment. I’m in Greece, walking around the white cities and the white beaches and having a hard time making myself believe that I won’t be going back to Nantes any time soon.
For now, with my mind on other things, it’s those smaller things that I miss, and they’re easily forgotten in the excitement and uncertainty of traveling. I’m in a place that I’ve wanted to visit ever since I ate my first gyro and it has not fallen short of my expectations. So, carrying four months worth of stuff in my backpack and feeling somewhat homeless, I’ve left Nantes behind me and have entered the final leg of my travels abroad.
I spent a lot of last week thinking about how lucky I am. I had spent most of the previous several weeks jumping from city to city in Europe with people I have known for less than four months but feel like I’ve known forever, checking off a decent-sized chunk of my places-to-see-in-Europe list and doing everything from eating Dutch apple pie in the capital of the Netherlands to standing above Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. And yet, I was still happy to be back, sitting in the house of a family that I was so nervous to meet in January but with whom I now comfortably eat dinner every night and sit out on the deck and talk or watch soccer while sipping cognac (which I only pretend to like out of pride, because my host responded to my 18-year-old host brother’s embarrassed inability to drink it without coughing by saying that it’s “not for little boys”). I felt so content, so glad not be worried about internships or running between meetings or constantly sending emails, so satisfied to be where I am. And then I got mugged.
Alright, dramatic intro over, here’s what happened:
Last week one of my friends found out that she would be going home early Saturday morning due to a family emergency. So naturally some goodbyes were in order, and Friday night found a bunch of us hanging out on the bank of the Loire, enjoying the warm night and each others’ company before our friend’s early departure the next morning. It was a pretty chill night, and, although tinged with sadness, felt like a perfect culmination to the post-vacation week and an appropriate kickoff for the last segment of our study abroad.
At 2 a.m. one of my friends decided to head back. Having missed the last tram, she was faced with a 40-minute walk, so I offered to accompany her on my way home. About four blocks from her house, three guys wearing black hoodies walked out from around the corner and directly into our path. Thinking they were just being drunk and obnoxious, I tried to push pass them, only to be told that we weren’t going anywhere. The guy who had spoken to me pulled his hand out of his pocket to show his brass knuckles and the two others followed his lead, pushing us against the wall of the building behind us. They proceeded to go through my pockets and my friend’s purse, stealing my iPod, both of our phones, and about 60 € in cash before stepping back and letting us walk away.
Luckily we didn’t have more cash on us (all of that was, in fact, my friend’s. Being the good broke-student-traveler that I am, my wallet was empty). Luckily they left us our cards, ID, etc. Luckily neither of us got hurt.
Now, a police report and a ton of retellings later, all that’s really changed is that I can’t listen to music on the bus and my friends and I don’t go out at night with more than 10 € in our pockets. Not altogether bad changes. I mean, getting mugged sucked, and the iPod-less plane, bus, train, and ferry rides in the few weeks after my program will inevitably reinforce my regret for having forgotten to leave that little device at home before going out. But really, it could have been so much worse, and it was a small reminder of several things: that I should not take my personal safety for granted, that I can live without a phone and an MP3 player, that even the French can be threatening when wearing brass knuckles, and that I cannot always control my surroundings, even in a place where I feel so at home.
So to pick up where I left off, last week was our spring break, and I spent it in Oslo, Prague, and Berlin. Oslo was mediocre. I mainly just went there because I found a really cheap flight, which, thanks to French train strikes and various other things, I had to change to a much more expensive flight, making the city that much less enjoyable. It was definitely a one-day city, which was exactly the amount of time I spent there, and I found myself wishing I had skipped it altogether and just gone hiking in the fjords or the forests to the north.
Prague was beautiful. I was by myself there so I unfortunately missed out on the nightlife and the sit-down dinners but I saw all the touristy things and went to a bunch of lookout points with incredible views. It seemed very preserved, but in a slightly fake way, clearly meant to appeal to tourists. Still, it was an awesome place, and its magnificent steeples and ornate bridges surrounded by red-topped buildings and softened by the constant rainy mist made it perfect for the solitary traveler looking to drink in the spectacular atmosphere of the city.
Where Prague seemed old and compact, however, Berlin seemed new and spread out, with monuments and historical sites integrated into a modern metropolis. Being the history buff that I am, I loved standing at the Berlin Wall and the WWII sites and trying to imagine what the city must have been like in that turbulent era. I couldn’t really picture it, but I really could feel the weight of the city’s past, and was impressed with how it seemed to acknowledge that weight, to condense and solidify it in the form of well-placed memorials and to force people to look at it and remember it and carry it with them. But, in direct contrast to all that, Berlin retained a level of lightness and fun, embodied in beer gardens and bands of old men playing outside and Ampelmann lawn chairs lining the river and squatting artists displaying quirky art in outside galleries surrounded by graffiti and live blues. It had a lot of interesting contrasts that made the city one of my favorite places that I’ve visited since I’ve been here (and having friends with me after almost a week of traveling by myself didn’t hurt).
So that’s the rest of Europe for you. All is well here in Nantes, and it’s nice being back after having spent less than a week here all month. We returned to beautiful weather and in the middle of the city’s carnaval, which, although not a welcome surprise after getting off a two-hour train that followed a 14-hour bus ride with a suitcase and a cranky attitude, has definitely displayed the city at its weirdest. I cannot believe how quickly things have passed, and how fast the end of my program is approaching. Time to stop running around Europe and spend my last few weeks in France. I guess I can do that.
I obviously have some apologies to make to those of you following my blog (if there are any of you left). I found it to be harder and harder to get myself to write something, as it seems completely contrary to my internal commitment to live in the moment and… Okay, that’s a load of crap; really I’ve just been lazy and have had other things going on.
So to get back into the swing of things, I’m just going to give a brief update of the places I’ve been since my last post. This is going to be fast, so bear with me on this one and I’ll try to make future posts a little less surface.
My trip to Madrid seems like an incredibly long time ago. We saw the sights, went to a couple of bars, ate paella, and just walked around a lot. The city seemed big, young, and pretty energetic, and I’ve heard that its citizens sleep less than any other city in Europe. Seems about right.
A few weeks after that, my program took us to Normandy to see the beaches of the Allied landing, the American cemetery, and the D-Day museum in Caen. It was cold and overcast, which was appropriate for the WWII themed weekend, and pretty eerie seeing the rows of white crosses and standing on the sand where the Allied soldiers disembarked. In the end, though, most of us just ended up skipping stones or walking on the edge of the tide, which felt weirdly appropriate for inexplicable reasons.
Two weeks after that, a couple of friends and I went to Amsterdam for an extended weekend. We all crammed into a hotel room and spent the weekend wandering around the city, checking out the canals and trying to avoid the rain. The red light district there was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Red fluorescent lights illuminating street-level windows, red neon signs, and red reflectors lining the canals give the area a literal red glow, while prostitutes behind said windows sit on stools or stand and tap the glass or close the curtain when they have a customer. I’m probably adding more meaning to this than most guys would, but it felt wrong being there, walking down the canal checking out the women in the windows as if they were tourist attractions. But it was fascinating at the same time, seeing this whole scene which is usually so hidden in most places being openly displayed to pedestrians. I had a great time, for more reasons than I can mention here (just kidding, Mom), and loved the canals and museums and pancakes that the city had to offer.
So since I have more pictures and words than I thought I wanted to include, I’m going to talk about my spring break in my next post. Which is already written, so you definitely won’t have to wait another month to read it. Not that you were worried. Whoever this “you” is that I’m talking to. I’m going to stop.
I knew our visit to Morocco was going to be very quick – into Marrakech at 7:30 am Wednesday morning and back to Madrid by 11:00 am Thursday. Rather than pack those twenty-four hours or so with pre-planned and well-researched activities, however, my friend and I pretty much just got on the plane, looked up a few things on Lonely Planet, and bought a map in the airport before hopping on a taxi to our hostel.
So when we stepped out of the cab into the huge and chaotic Djemaa el Fna market I couldn’t help but think that maybe I should have done a little more preparation for this. My senses were suddenly inundated by motorcycle horns and calls of shop owners showcasing scarves and ceramics and smells wafting out of spice stands and food vendors and people running into me and people offering to guide us and people standing around taking pictures and people just crammed in the streets trying to get away from all the other people. It was an exciting but overwhelming first impression, and I was relieved to find some quiet inside the cozy, cushioned lobby of our hostel, where we were served a simple but delicious breakfast of tea and bread and honey and conversed with other, equally overwhelmed travelers.
Reenergized by our meal and equipped with sightseeing suggestions from our fellow hostel-dwellers, we threw our stuff in our room and went back out into the market, determined not to waste any time. We spent the rest of the day exploring a few palaces and a museum, buying food from street vendors, and walking down small, busy streets allowing ourselves to be awed by the intensity of our surroundings.
For dinner, we ate tajines and couscous on a terrace overlooking the center plaza of the market, watching as the sun set on the long stretch of flat rooftops and marveling as the night vendors replaced the orange juice stands and snake charmers on the streets below us. At night, the market is a whole different animal. Storytellers and dancers and palm readers take their place next to the newly set up food tents, filling the square with shouts and bursts of music. Locals and tourists squeeze onto makeshift tables to sample grilled meats and mint tea or crowd around the musicians and other acts, a fog of steam and smoke from the grills accentuating the exotic aura of the market.
We couldn’t really take pictures, because as soon as we were seen with a camera out we would get asked for money to pay for the photo, but my friend managed to discreetly capture a few seconds of the sounds of the night:
After eating some boiled snails and avocado ice cream, my travel companion and I, plus a friend from home that I literally bumped into after dinner, sat down at an outdoor restaurant to order a pastilla and almond juice and delay the end of our one day here.
A man sitting at the next table, who we later learned was named Khalid, heard us speaking English and, clearly wanting to practice the language, struck up a conversation with us. He kept expressing how happy he was that we were there, that we Americans had decided to experience his country and his culture. I asked him why he said that. “You’re breaking stereotypes,” he said. “You chose to explore another country. And I’m happy you chose Morocco.” Amazing the celebrity status (positive and negative) one can receive just by virtue of one’s citizenship. What did I personally do to deserve that? Be lucky enough to be born where I was. Nothing else. Weird.
After giving us his email address in case we decide to return, Khalid left and we returned to our hostel. We flew back to Madrid the next morning, exhausted but content and feeling like we saw as much as we could see in a day of the colorful, intense, eclectic, and bustling city of Marrakech.
I don’t have a ton to say about Bordeaux, so I figured I’d let this slideshow do most of the talking. The city itself has the same white stone buildings, narrow streets with tiny cars, cobblestone walkways and roundabouts that seem to compose most French cities. It’s cluttered with cathedrals and monuments and is cut in half by a river, from which can be seen a line of old buildings broken up by the dark, ornate steeple tips and a couple of long bridges.
I spent two days in the city, one by myself and another with a friend, wandering the streets, popping in and out of churches and snapping pictures of statues. As a poor college student, I couldn’t exactly afford the nice wine and gourmet meals that are the city’s primary draws, so there wasn’t much to do except seek out free museums and just walk around. The Garonne River and the historic-looking architecture provided some very picturesque views, and leisurely exploring the very French-looking streets was really relaxing, but in the end I’m glad I only had two days there.
Possibly the coolest part of the Bordeaux section of my trip was the train ride out, not because I was dying to leave but because of the vineyards and forest groves and small houses that I could see from my window. I couldn’t help but stare at the views and contemplate how such a humble-looking region could produce some of the best and most expensive wines in the world. As the train continued south, the hilly countryside gradually swelled into the Pyrenees Mountains, which line the Franco-Spanish border, and I suddenly found myself in Spain, where the next and more exciting segment of my trip began.
Way too much time has been passing between posts. I’ve been meaning to write something for a while but I got caught up in planning my February break which led to planning weekend trips which led to spending a lot of my free time looking up cheap flights online. And then midterms started, which weren’t exactly stressful except that they sparked feelings of “holy shit I’ve already been here for over a month” and “this is going to go by so fast,” which made it even tougher to sit down and write something.
I am currently en route to Bordeaux, where I will be spending the next two days before continuing on to Pamplona, Madrid, and Morocco. It’s going to be a whirlwind of a trip and I will have a lot to write about, so be looking for more posts in the near future.
Anyway, the last few weeks have been alternatively exciting and tranquil, so I’m sorry if this is kind of vague and all over the place. The coolest thing that happened was a day trip to Saint Malo and Mont Saint Michel on the Normandy coast. The first is a small, fairly unexciting town notable mainly for its striking coastline and a medium-sized chateau. The second, however, is an old monastery on an island off the coast of Normandy surrounded by an artificially quaint tourist town and is one of the more awe-inspiring sites in France.
Perched on an island and jutting out of a large expanse of flat rock, water, and quicksand, this chateau is imposing and magnificent, and, in seeing it from a distance, I was suddenly reminded of the incredibly long and varied history of the country in which I am living. The visit brought back the excitement I felt during my first week here and an awareness of how lucky I am to be having this experience in such a sweet place, both of which have stuck with me in the two weeks since that visit.
Other than that, things have been pretty low-key, characterized mostly by a few nearly life-changing culinary discoveries (such as the ker-y-pom and the tartine au chocolat), a decent amount of clubbing and bar hopping, and just hanging out with friends. I’ve started rock climbing and will start kayaking once I get back from break, but even with that I have had a lot more leisure time than I’m used to. Lunch breaks here are generally at least two hours long, university classes usually meet once a week and aren’t nearly as structured or work-intensive as classes back home, and extra-curricular activities are much less common. People seem to spend most of their time just sitting around and talking or slowly flipping through a newspaper while sipping an espresso.
This slow-paced lifestyle bothered me at first, but I’m gradually adjusting to it. I have come to appreciate spending time every day reading or walking around the city, discovering new places and remembering that, though I’ve been here for a month, there is still a lot left for me to see. That, combined with my heightened awareness of how awesome study abroad is and how quickly it is going to go by, has given this experience the novelty, fun, and leisure of an extended vacation, but one in which I have the time and the means to really dive into a new environment and, if you’ll excuse the cheesy metaphor, learn to swim.
That being said, I am really excited to get out of the city for a while and see other places. So, since the vineyards outside my train window are much more interesting than my computer screen, that’s where I’m going to end this post. A bientôt.
How can I describe the three weeks since my arrival? Well, there’s the usual my-host-family-is-awesome, French-food-is-amazing, the-other-abroad-students-are-cool update that I’ve given to most of my friends who have asked so far. All of that is true.
My host family has been so nice and welcoming, especially my host father, with whom I spend several hours almost every weeknight watching soccer or the news or dubbed-over American movies (and, once, a marathon of Walker, Texas Ranger) and discussing, or attempting to discuss, politics or pop culture. The food, more specifically (and stereotypically) the pastries, the bread, the cheese, and the wine, has been great, and continues to consume the vast majority of my weekly expenses. And I have made a lot of awesome friends on my program, and, despite our somewhat frustrating habit of hording together in bars and cafes adding loud bursts of English to the quiet din of French conversation, I have been having a really good time with all of them.
But instead of just going on about all that, I’m going to throw in a short anecdote that I think sums things up pretty well.
On Wednesday I had my first class at the Université de Nantes: history of decolonization and the Third World. I left half an hour early and arrived ten minutes later with plenty of time to listen to my iPod and pretend to read a French newspaper, casually leaning against a wall wearing my newly acquired scarf and feeling pretty European. Forty minutes later I was sitting towards the back of a vast, dark amphitheater listening to an old professor monotonously rambling about something called lampi automone (which I eventually figured out was l’Empire Ottoman). Thanks to his slow, dragging voice I was able to follow along pretty well with the lecture, especially after I figured out the topic, and was taking some fairly competent notes in French, silently patting myself on the back for keeping up. About ten minutes before the end of class, a girl behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked me something completely indecipherable. Seeing my blank look, she repeated the question a little louder. I stared at her for a second, too proud to ask her to talk slower, before muttering something that resembled “je ne sais pas” and quickly turning around. My confidence was shattered and my foreignness revealed to everyone in my immediate vicinity.
The class finished and I headed to the Restaurant Universitaire for lunch, quickly forgetting the classroom incident in the anticipation of a huge portion of food. After filling up my tray, I wandered through the seating area looking for people I knew or at least an empty table to sit by myself. Finding neither, I walked towards a small table with two empty chairs and, momentarily forgetting how to ask “Is someone sitting here” and not wanting to betray my American-ness, proceeded to sit down without a word. Realizing, thanks to the looks I was receiving from the other people at the table, that I was probably awkwardly in a spot reserved for someone else but unsure if I should immediately vacate the seat, I focused intently on eating my lunch as fast as I possibly could, finishing in around five minutes and leaving the cafeteria right away.
Both fairly insignificant but uncomfortable incidents, where my eagerness to blend in only heightened my awkwardness, were very characteristic of my first three weeks here. Within the surprising normalcy that I feel in my daily life here are those moments that remind me that I am an entire ocean away from home. But rather than dread or detest those moments, I appreciate them, because they bring me back to reality. Those language blocks and culture shocks serve as constant reminders of the awesome opportunity that I have been presented with, challenging me to make the best of my time here and showing me that if I want to transition from tourist to resident I’m going to have to work at it.
After 12 hours of flying and a two-hour layover, boarding the high-speed train from Paris to Nantes produced in me conflicting sensations of relief and apprehension; relief to finally be in France, to have navigated the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and to have successfully bought a train ticket and student discount card, and apprehension for the next leg of my journey. Gazing out at the landscape through the window of the high-speed train from Paris to Nantes, my hands clenched and my stomach churning with nervous anticipation, I thought, “Wow, this is it. There’s no going back now.” All of the unknowns of being on my own in a foreign country, all of the what-if’s that had been suppressed by the rush of packing and preparation and excitement of the past few months, flew through my head as I watched the miles that separated me from my destination fly past. With my cheek pressed to the window, I silently begged the train to slow down, to give me time to make the adjustment from the comfort of home to the disorientation and unease of being alone on a different continent before being thrown into an unfamiliar household and forced to speak a vaguely familiar language.
It did not help my nerves that, due most likely to some combination of fatigue and anxiety, French suddenly seemed almost fully inaudible to me. I tried to calm myself down by focusing on the quaintness of the towns through which the train passed, observing the European architecture occasionally colored with French graffiti. I contemplated the man wearing a coat covered in pictures of Benjamin Franklin and the billboards broadcasting the French translations of American advertising slogans. But the nervous pangs in my stomach not cease.
Thus, I cannot pretend that my arrival in Nantes was as exciting or easygoing as I had imagined it would be. I felt lost. I had chosen this specific program primarily because I was drawn to the absence of familiarity, the lack of a safety net to protect me from facing the challenge of full cultural immersion. But at that moment, despite my attempts to appear brave and to share in the excitement of my fellow students, I secretly longed for the comfort of home or school.
My introduction to my host family, however, brought me an enormous sense of relief. Upon accepting me into his home, my host father told me, “Tu peux être ici comme tu es chez toi” (basically, make yourself at home), while my host mother graciously complimented my French. Although much of the dinner conversation was over my head, I felt I could understand the gist of the discussion and contribute when asked, which was often. That is not to say that I was immediately at ease in this foreign environment, and I know that it will often be a struggle to acclimate to my new surroundings. But the knowledge that it is possible to function competently and comfortably on my own in another country has afforded me a newfound confidence in my own adaptability, a confidence that I will take with me on my travels and that I hope will enable me to continue to take risks and to experience as much as possible over the next four months.
I am a very last minute person. Maybe it’s because I work better under pressure, so 10pm the night before a 15-page is due is actually the peak of my productivity. Maybe it’s because I like the excitement, the exhilaration and the sense of accomplishment that comes from arriving at the airport 20 minutes before my flight the night before Thanksgiving, rushing through security, and collapsing into my seat on the airplane with five minutes to spare. Maybe it’s just laziness. But whatever it is, I have been increasingly unable to combat it throughout high school and college.
I thought, however, that my preparations for studying abroad in Nantes would be exempt from my natural tendency toward procrastination. I mean, this isn’t like a final paper, where even if I start it the night before I’ll get it done. But that was not the case.
I had my appointment with the French Consulate in Chicago to get my student visa literally three days before I went home for winter break. That was the earliest time that I could schedule it considering I did not fill out my Campus France application, the French government’s student visa pre-approval process, until two weeks before. And the reason for that was that I put off renewing my passport, a process that can take up to 12 weeks, until three days before I went back to school this summer. The list goes on.
But now, with a week left before my departure, I have found that I am actually pretty prepared. My flights are finally booked, my last forms submitted (although well after the deadline), and most of my travel requirements purchased, thanks mostly to Christmas presents from relatives. I was never worried. I’ve known all along that things would come together eventually. I knew that because this is too big of an opportunity to mess up. I have planned on studying abroad since before high school, and have become progressively more excited about it as it gets closer.
I am excited to live with a family, to see and become part of their lives and to allow them to become part of mine. I am excited about becoming fluent in French, a language that I have been continually failing to grasp since 9th grade. I am excited about being the only Northwestern student in Nantes, and being forced to start over and meet entirely new people. Most of all, I am excited to immerse myself in another culture, not just to be an outside observer.
So now, with nothing left to do except pack, it has finally sunk in that this study abroad thing is really happening. This journey that for years has been something to look forward to, a subject of small talk with relatives and acquaintances rather than something concrete and real, is actually about to begin. And, for once, I couldn’t be more ready.
