When Did I Stop Being Afraid? (With a Little Help From My Friends and Family)

If you’ve been following from the very beginning of my adventures, Reader, or if you’ve gone back and caught up, you’ll know just how long it took for me to get my head around the idea of fecking off to France. I’d calmed down only a little before D(eparture)-Day (mainly thanks to a last-minute holiday in Lanzerote with The Wife, her beardy boyfriend The Messiah and our cuddly friend Chunk). As Auntie No Bull, who is incapable of bullshit, put it (although she had no idea I was listening), “She’s bricking it, isn’t she?”

But by mid-November, I’d been through what I have now fondly come to know as the Two-Month Period. This is the period I spent bemusedly wandering the streets of my host city, or the halls of my host university, constantly being surprised, generally feeling lost or unsure and frequently screaming inwardly, “But HOW am I supposed to x,y and z?”… Actually, I still bemusedly wander the halls of my host university inwardly screaming, but that’s because life at Mirail is akin to that of Alice in Wonderland…

As much as I fail to understand fellow human beings and as much as I’ve never truly felt anchored to my home country, I distinctly remember feeling alien here. All the time. It was not the behaviour of the people around me that made me feel all that different. It came from me. I put myself under (probably unnecessary) stress to fit in, to disappear into the throng and for nothing about me- my appearance, my accent, my behaviour or my way of thinking- to give me away as an outsider.

Of course, being a redhead, I immediately draw some attention. And then when the weather began cooling down in October (to less than 16 degrees) I drew even more attention by deeming it t-shirt weather. I still get irritated when, judging by my appearance or my speech, people guess I’m English. Or Irish. Or worse, German. …I jest.

The first indication I had that I was emerging from the Two-Month Period was a little after two months of living here- it was the point I started saying “I live in Toulouse”, the point I started feeling I belong in Toulouse and, not when I stopped feeling foreign (because I still do on occasion), but when I stopped caring whether I was foreign or not. The minute I stopped trying to force my being accepted, I became part of the backdrop.

It wasn’t until the end of December that I realised the process was complete. I was laying in the middle bunk, in the darkness of a moving train, plummeting towards Metz, in the very Northeast of France. As blurred shapes streaked across the window by my feet, it suddenly dawned on me that I was diagonally conquering France. And I was doing it on my own.

When did I stop being scared?

I spent 14 hours on trains that day. I travelled for 16 in total with nothing but a rucksack and my old noggin for company. And at no point did I feel the slightest ounce of fear. I felt giddy with some kind of assumed invincibility. And as I stepped off of the train and rushed to give Columbo- the reason I travelled half way home and back a week before Christmas (no points for forward planning)- a massive hug, I knew I had this Year Abroad thing down.

I was of course wrong. It turns out there’s also a Two-Months-After-the-First-Trip-Home Period. But that’s a story for another day.

Metz and Beyond: With a Little Help from My Friends

I covered almost 600 miles with the change at Marseilles, snatched a couple of hours kip on the bunk which conveniently found itself at the hypotenuse of a young couple (who had evidently booked their bunks according to likelihood of being able to stare lovingly at one another) was asked in rapid French at 4am exactly what time the train had been due to leave Marseilles and finally stepped off of the train in Metz at 8am looking and feeling surprisingly bloody chirpy considering.

I’ll admit the first thing that struck me about finding myself in the North of France was the cold, the dark and the sheer amount of dog shit. But it was 8am on a December morning, so the first two can be forgiven. And it turns out that despite the frequency one must avoid dog turd, Metz is a very quaint and picturesque town, with an obvious German influence (and despite this one must pronounce the name “mess”).

View from Chapou

There is a clear Mediterranean feel in Toulouse- the view from my window is a jumble of shapes across different levels in white and ruddy orange, with the whitewash of the house faces against the terracotta roof tiles. Metz is decidely more beige. Sandy maybe. And I am of course used to living in a big, student-y city. Metz is not a big city. And the average age is considerably older.

So far, Project Change of Scene so good.

New scenery for me, new coat for Columbo

I immediately fell in love with the riverside, the grand Gothic structures standing tall (if foreboding) across the skyline and their sudden contrast with the shiny new Pompidou Centre (which is the subject of much excited conversation in Metz and Columbo could well have been lynched for not taking me there, so she did of course oblige).

We were of course in plain Christmas market season. So we spent a good bit of time admiring the range of potential gifts (and tat), looking up at the ferris wheel and eating local (German) delicacies. The Alsace-Lorraine region definitely has its food going for it. And of course we did the Pompidou Centre, which had some cracking exhibitions on, including one which involved stumbling around in the dark, with a wind up torch  originally destined for an upmarket Christmas cracker, looking at photos. It left me feeling cultured, if with a mild wrist and neck ache. My favourite exhibition, however, was the result of a project worked on by dozens of art students, who had the patience to plan out a lot of very mathematical dots and lines. The finished works were a visual mind fart.

Beautifully modelled by Columbo

Of course, Metz wasn’t the only destination on my whistle-stop tour of the Alsace-Lorraine. I also made it to Nancy, which is  a Versailles-like town with lots of gold and marble. Bits of it literally sparkle. Our exploration of Nancy included an impromptu trip to the zoo, hanging out with some friends of friends in a regular haunt of Columbo’s and strong coffee in a school (we were visiting a teaching assistant friend of Columbo’s who lives in the school he works at).

Pheasant feeding at the zoo

Hugs at Nancy

And we made it to Strasbourg, which did wonders for getting me into the Christmas spirit. We started off the day with Kono Pizza because where else can you get pizza in a cone? Turns out lots of places, but it was still pretty spectacular. Fuelled with ridiculous amounts of cheese, we hit the Christmas markets like the die-hard tourists we were.

Strasbourg’s population consisted of a beautiful, eclectic mix of Germans popped across the border for Christmas market tidbits and local and not-so-local French and German speakers, often bilingual. Sadly, I’ve never set foot in Germany and my German vocabulary consists of the words for “airport”, “yes, certainly” and “window factory” (true story and you can blame my father, The Bank, for the latter). The only complete sentence I can utter in German is “I have a rabbit, but I ate it”- this being the message that was left on my student flat fridge for several weeks by my wonderfully musical if a joker of a flatmate, The Voice.

The mix of people and languages just made it all the more new and exciting for me- although some of the oldy-worldy buildings made me very reminiscent of York. Strasbourg had a bit of everything- wooden bridges across waterways, buildings with traditional timber-framing… not to mention the countless market stalls and some of the biggest Christmas trees I’ve seen in my life. I managed to make an excellent start to my Christmas shopping- my judgement was apparently not impaired by the several glasses of mulled wine and cider I sampled along the way.

I came away, not only with the perfect gift (a wee model house with room for a candle to light up the windows) for my dear grandmother (a.k.a. Gribs), but also an assortment of plastic beakers, with various  slogans reminding me how nowhere else in the world will ever compare to Strasbourg at Christmas. I use one to hold my toothbrush.

Home Sweet Home?

I spent the final night at Columbo’s abode drinking far too much wine, thanks to her favourite off-license down the road, where we earned ourselves quite a reputation for being regular customers. Columbo lives in a sort of renovated dormitory- it was clearly intended once for boarders- and the  heavy doors and long, dark corridor were quite the trial when taking a 3am toilet trip. It does, however, have  a balcony- when I say “balcony”, I mean “glorified fire escape accessible via a broken window”. So out we went, wrapped in blankets, to admire the silhouettes of Gothic constructions across the skyline and ponder upon a long weekend well spent… when we turned around to see a huddle of pubescent boys, students of Columbo, not quite believing their luck at spotting a teaching assistant on her balcony, dressing gown-clad, glass of wine in hand.

Taking the cider from the fridge (window sill), Columbo couldn’t wait to step down from the chair.

All too soon, it was time for me to depart and make the ten-hour trip to the opposite corner of the Hexagone. With the completion of this journey, I racked up over thirty train travel hours and had seen a good bit of France by railway. I knew I was approaching home when I clocked a couple of blokes adding a “g” to their “-ain”‘ and punctuating their sentences with either “putain(g)” (the Southern comma) or “con” (the full stop). It felt good to be home. Home from home.

I didn’t bother unpacking. I would be leaving for England with a case of dirty washing in a matter of days.

I Want to See Mountains Again, Gandalf, Mountains! (and Finding Irish People on Facebook)

Prelude to Mountains- Exams, Beer and Revolution!

I return from another long gap in blogging, which can only be excused by the abrupt return to Erasmus reality after the Christmas period. Abrupt in that my Erasmus life was hauled from the dead (“Clear!”), jump-started and turned up a notch (“dun-dun, dun-dun”). And in our glee of being reunited, the Erasmus students ran off into the sunset and drank lots of beer. And then they were forced to take exams.

I swore to take this year as an academic holiday. So this was more a minor inconvenience than the source of much stress. Even where Université Le Mirail’s organisation was involved.

After an accidental night out with Gandalf on Coke* (one of my Idiots Abroad with quite a talent for forgetting where he’s been, making conversation with strangers and picking up phallic beer tokens), I took my Modern Greek written paper at 8AM one Saturday, having come to the conclusion that even the Greeks couldn’t learn their language in a day, so it was pointless me trying. Gandalf and I had been refused entry to a club “because the bouncer didn’t know us” at 3.30AM and had come away with two stolen flagons that had contained a litre of beer each… and inexplicably, some salt and a piece of wood shaped like a penis. This was quite a conversation starter on the way home.- three French people wanted to offer their opinion on where Gandalf might have picked up his “staff”.

And to be fair, there was hardly any point preparing for my exams… There is no preparing for what Mirail throws at you… An exam with no paper, no invigilator and nothing that remotely resembles an exam, for example.

The Exam that Never Was really brought the French out of the French. I’ve come to the conclusion that the desire for a good revolution is hard-wired into their genetic code. Put a group of French students into an exam room with an AWOL invigilator and there’s soon talk of democracy and a Popular Movement to Toss Off this Exam.

With exams over (excluding the replacement exam for The Exam That Almost Never Was), half the Erasmus students had to prepare to say goodbye to the second half, who were moving on to warmer climates, such as Spain and Argentina- apart from Nemo (who is a ginger Fin(n). And by way of goodbye, there was much frolicking around in Toulouse by night (in animal costumes or otherwise).

La Nuit des Animaux

I have to admit that at some point during the evening, I was miaowed at, forgot I was in France and yelled, “I’m a LION!”

To stifle my grief at my friends’ departure, I watched three hours of fascist-bashing (Django), coming away with the (probably mistaken) impression that it is okay to shoot ignorant people in the face (or crotch). And then I took off to the mountains.

*I should add that the Coke Gandalf is so frequently on is in liquid form and comes out of a red can. Although we should perhaps stop him drinking as much, since when we ended up in the St des Seins for the second time, he turned to me dramatically and said “… I have no memory of this place…”

I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains!

Here, I have to admit that this is not the first time I’ve gone galavanting in the Pyrenees. A chalet in a tiny place called Latour de Carole, right on the Spanish border, was the venue for Erastmas. My Idiots Abroad and I took a train through the Pyrenees (and a blizzard), with stacks of food, drink and presents for Secret Santa.

Latour de Carole is so close to the Spanish border that we were greeted with “Hola bonjour”. As well as the French and European Union flags, we spotted a few Catalan flags dotted around houses and squares. The buildings had a Swiss feel about them. Next to the only supermarket (and sign of civilisation) was a ski and surf shop. And the mountains were tremendous. Snowy and grassy at the same time. Cold and sunny.

We hadn’t been there five minutes before a snowball fight broke out.

Nemo, our ginger Fin(n), is stereotypically unphased by receiving a dusting of snow to the head.

After a spot of lunch (Peter Kay family Christmas style, since there were nine of us and three different heights of chair) we headed straight out to conquer the nearest mountain. And we declared it Lord of the Rings-esque and promptly gave each other nicknames. I’m not sure how I ended up with Gimli- I may be ginger, but I am not short.

After quite a lot of running through snow and across mountain tops, in a LOTR-themed relay race (“Rohan will answer!”), whilst singing the film soundtrack and rehydrating with fresh, untouched snow, Kettle and I set about trying to find the very highest point we could make it to (I gave up before Kettle did). But soon this little adventure had to end, since light was fading and we were still halfway up a mountain. Kettle and I having made it higher than the others, we had some catching up to do. And to misquote the song, the only way is down.

Almost on top of the world…

I probably haven’t been scrambling before this day during my adult life. But there’s nothing makes you feel more youthful than throwing yourself feet-first down the side of a mountain, like tobogganing without the toboggan, with extra rocks to jump over.

I think I made it down in just over a minute. Just in time to witness Kettle’s dramatic entrance.

The evening was one of merriment. The Meerkat and Pirate of Cari-bean managed to rustle up ratatouille and pasta for nine… And we got through nine bottles of wine, whilst exchanging gifts (mine could not have been more perfect- a novelty Santa hat) and playing games. It was like something out of a Wham music video…

Santa and Elves

Return of the Mountain Queen

So yes, just nicely in time to distract me from the departure of half my Idiots Abroad, I headed off to the mountains again, this time in the company of a big ol’ group of Erasmus students, of which there are many Italians who I like hanging out with. Especially when there’s pizza.

There was no pizza this time (there has been, on occasion, pizza).

But there was a hell of a lot of snow.

Dude, where’s my car?

Sure, you need a few jumpers when you’re used to warmer climes and you’re heading to the Haute-Pyrenees. But there was more (Italian) luggage on that coach than on your average Easyjet flight (and not just because they have an inexplicable talent for losing your baggage). And Italians never seem content that you are wearing enough layers to survive. I insisted that seven was enough. Much love for the Italians, with more layers than an onion, having bought out half of Decathlon between them.

I took a small rucksack and have never felt more obviously British in my life.

To all the folks in Blighty who pissed and moaned at the inconvenience a few centimetres of snow brought them, the hardy old folks of the Haute-Pyrenees laugh in your faces, with their four varieties of snow plow, front rooms converted into coffee houses and Carrefour Montagne.

The beautiful village of Estarvielle

It was three days of being often a bit chilly, often wet through and for those who wear glasses, often utterly blind. I loved every minute.

When falling on your arse isn’t enough…

The first day saw us braving a blizzard wearing raquettes, or snow shoes. Simply put, these are contraptions designed to make even the most graceful person (which I am not) walk like a drunken toddler. In my case, they made me spend more time on my tiny hiney than anything else (although on one occasion I ended up falling on a Frenchman’s chest after a playful scuffle). At one point the snow was so deep, the blizzard so angry and the bit of mountain we were climbing so steep, that to get down our guide insisted “Servez-vous de vos culs !” For those who don’t speak French: “Use your arses!”

I had never worked up more of an appetite for something warm in my belly or a good glass of wine. I ended up getting both, thanks to my new Irish acquaintances. I’m fighting the urge to nickname them with typically Irish things, like rainbows, leprechauns, drinking and swearing… And excellent sense of humour (hopefully)!

All I know is that so far I’ve had to ask for eleven Irish translations and that Irish people are impossible to find on Facebook. Irish logic follows that if you think you know how to pronounce a letter, you definitely don’t. And there are seemingly at least three variations of every name.

The next day was devoted to tobogganing, walking to the next village (an hour on foot) to take some spectacular pictures of the frozen lake, to raid the Carrefour Montagne for its supplies of wine and chocolate and to drink hot chocolate and mulled wine in a French couple’s sitting room.

Finding myself in English-speaking company once more (which was admittedly a nice break), I watched some classic French comedy and had a giggle at the expense of the French music channel. And then drank far too much wine and danced with a charming German fellow, who may or may not have been too chuffed about this.

The next morning was devoted to soothing our heads, wrapped up in blankets like a big ol’ Erasmus midday sleepover. We managed to drag ourselves out to attempt to see some cheese-making in action. Admittedly, the half hour walk through slush, snow and up- and downhill climbs proved too much for mine and Suffering** Hippy’s aching joints and we took refuge in a mountain top Mairie with the rest of the Irish folk, the Frenchman whose chest I fell on and another new acquaintance. The Mairie, the town hall, was sort of shut, but huddled up on the staircase, or dancing along to some banging tunes, we managed to stave off the cold.

The Frenchman, who I will call The Count, provided bilingual entertainment with the aid of a banana. Holding the thing up like a gun, he bursts through the door, shouting to the wintery wasteland outside “Ze English! I ‘ave found zem- send reinforcements!” There was a sudden, loud chorus of “We’re Irish!”

The Count earned his nickname with his second bout of bilingual entertainment. Although quite the writer in French, his adaptation of an English novel proved hysterical. He stumbled somewhat over “The Count, in all his anxiety…”. If I tell you he pronounced that last word “ang-shitty”, I’m sure you can imagine, Reader, how he pronounced “Count”.

**”Suffering”, to the Irish, is an intensifier for almost any given swear word, or “Jesus”. Suffering Hippy’s favourite suffering combinations seem to be those which rhyme with “kite” and… Oh there’s no English word that rhymes with “bollocks”, sorry.

The rock chair- my greatest discovery since I discovered I fecking love mountains…