LUX/Trier

Some of you already know about this little misunderstanding, but last week when I got back to France, I went into the secretary's office asking for my schedule for second semester, since we were supposed to be starting on January 17th and it was just a few days before.  Well, I was told that the schedules weren't ready, so we weren't going to start school until the 24th.  Umm seriously guys?  Would have been nice to know that before coming back from the States!  I could have stay home another week!  I really shouldn't be complaining because either way I didn't have to work and was still getting paid :)  I had nothing to do all week, so I looked up some cheap train tickets and picked a place to go for a few days. I ended up in Luxembourg, which is a place that I'd never thought to go before, even though I've gone through the train station numerous times and have lived right next door for a few years now. 

The first thing I noticed there was that it was very hilly and also very green!  Luxembourgish people must have some crazy calf muscles, for reals.  The other thing I thought was, what the heck is everyone saying?  I heard a really weird mix of languages going around!  A lot of people were speaking French, but then there was this other weird language that I couldn't get ANY words from.  My whole "learning german" goal last year failed miserably, but I at least can understand some words here and there when people are speaking and I knew it wasn't that.  So turns out, there is a "luxembourgish" language that only like 400,000 people in the world speak, obviously only in Luxembourg.  They have three official languages there, French, German and Luxembourgish, and pretty much everyone speaks English perfectly.  So yeah, everyone from Luxembourg grows up speaking at LEAST 4 languages like it's no big deal.  Jerks!  

I spent my day there just walking around and exploring the city, and of course eating a gourmet tex-mex meal at the local Chi-chi's. Luxembourg is fortified like I've never seen a city before, it's surrounded by a huge valley and walls are built up to make the natural fortification even taller!  There was no getting in this city during war time.  My favorite part of the city was actually the cute little village in the valley underneath, called Grund.  There's actually an elevator that takes you up and down to the main city and the little one underneath, because if you don't have a car, that's a tough walk.  After exploring the old part of the town and finding an old castle that was built in the 900's, I decided to go to the "history of Luxembourg" museum to learn a little bit more about the city.  I won't bore you with the details, but I thought it was very interesting!  I also met some really nice Frenchies who were staying in my hostel room (oh and my hostel was also in the valley, with no elevator provided.  that was a fun hike).  So I ended up going out for a few drinks with a really nice French girl, and then turned in early since I had a big day ahead in Trier, Germany. 

Trier is somewhere I've wanted to go for a long time, I heard it was really picturesque and cute, and I realized that it was just a half hour train ride away from Lux.  I did the same thing there, just kind of walked around, chilled out, ate some delicious German food, and visited a random toy museum (big let down).  It turns out that I really loved Luxembourg, and was just kind of so-so about Trier!  It definitely is very cute, but there wasn't enough to do there considering that I was traveling solo.  The one cool thing is that there's a Roman monument there, that originally was a door to the city, and it was built around 200AD!  It's hard to even fathom how old that is.  Both towns really were my favorite kind of cities, really pretty, calm cities.  Luxembourg was especially beautiful since it was overlooking the valley, there are some really nice views from the city onto the surrounding area.  If I had a better camera I could have captured it but the pictures didn't justify it!  Here's what I did get a chance to take: 

The only way to get good tex mex in Europe

My bunk in the hostel

walking around the city walls in Lux

963

Looking over the Grund, the small village under Lux

random statues

what's left of the castle from the 900's

walking into Grund

the elevator!  europeans are just as lazy as americans at times

Trier, Gemany

GERMAN FOOD. soo good. and as gross as it is I actually finished all of this and didn't regret it

really unique organ in the chuch in Trier

Porta Nigra, built by the Romans around 200 AD

Sushi Night

For starters, I looove sushi.  I would eat it more often if sushi restaurants weren't so expensive!  I don't eat the weird looking stuff but I love the maki rolls. I got really into it when I moved here.  I don't know why or how, but sushi here is 10x better than in the States. Thibaut learned how to make sushi from a Japanese friend when he was living in Australia, and we've been talking about making it forever.  The problem was always that we needed a rice cooker to make the rice the right texture!  For Christmas, his sister gave him a rice cooker, FINALLY!  So we finally got around to making our sushi!  He found all the "tools" required at an asian store in Paris, even the chop sticks and little bowls for the soy sauce, and we were ready to go.  It's really not hard to make, and it's so much cheaper making it at home!  I think the reason it's so expensive going out to get sushi is because we both eat like 4 rolls instead of just eating a few like you're supposed to.  At least we can eat as much as we want at home, and it was just as good! I made a bunch of extra rolls too to impress my guests that I am having over tonight :)

The Ingredients!  Salmon, tuna, cucumber, avocado, mayo, cream cheese

Step one: the seaweed leaves for the outside

add a thin layer of rice

and the ingredients

roll it carefully

the results!  

the tuna rolls

my favorite: salmon, cream cheese, cucumber and avocado

Time to eat! 

Finally connected to the rest of the world!

I know this seems like a normal thing to most people, but I finally got the internet/cable TV and a land line this past week! I haven't been this excited about anything in a long time! I've been too cheap all year to do it, so I was sharing wifi with my neighbor and giving him a little bit of money each month. I finally realized that I'm an idiot, because I could have had unlimited free calling to the US and all over the world for the past 3 years and never did it. I'm so dumb. Their phones are connected to the internet here, so you can call all over the world, unlimited for FREE! Not to mention I can now Skype with a better connection, and an added bonus : TV. My landlord had an old TV that he gave me, I'm pretty sure this thing is from 1970 but I'm just happy it works! I can even get some shows and movies in English, including the GOONIES! my favorite childhood movie, which I'm watching right now :) It's the little things that make me happy!

The Galette des rois tradition

The Galette des Rois (King Cake) tradition is one of my favorite traditions that I've done every year here and I never thought to tell everyone about it! I usually do this with Thibaut's parents, but since I'm not in Alsace anymore I had to have my own little party for it. King cake is sold in bakeries and stores just a few weeks out of the year, in the middle of January. It's a flaky cake with a filling, usually something called frangipane or sometimes chocolate or apple. There is a trinket or charm (called une fève in French) baked inside of every cake, and when you buy the cake it comes with a crown. When it's time for dessert, you heat up the cake, cut it evenly for as many people are there are, and you choose someone (usually the youngest, or in this case Thibaut since it was for his birthday) to go under the table and call out names for every plate. The person that finds the little charm inside of their piece becomes king or queen for the day, and gets to wear the crown.

I swear we didn't cheat, but we had 2 king cakes this year, and Thibaut and I both got the charms! So we were the "king and queen" of the day. His charm was a little loaf of bread and mine was a random character from Narnia. The charms can really be anything. I have a little collection that I've kept from the past couple of years!

Unfortunately it's not possible to find these cakes in the States, except for in New Orleans. The tradition there is that you have to find the little baby that's baked into the cake, and whoever finds it has to buy the next cake. Not very fun! One of my friends won it once and hid it in her pocket because she didn't want to buy the next cake! I think I prefer the French way.

Turkey Day, French-style

I have to say I'm pretty proud of myself for pulling together this holiday! I'm the only person that had a big enough apartment, so I offered to have it at my place. I invited all the Americans plus a few others. It ended up being 2 frenchies, a spanish dude, a british dude, a jamaican, and 4 americans. Oh and did I mention that all I have is an electric toaster oven?? I had some help from everyone else, and we ended up having everything necessary to make a real Thanksgiving! Oh, except the turkey, but chickens the same, right? You'd be surprised how much stuff you can't find in France, for example: stuffing, cranberries, gravy, etc. We had to get really creative. It ended up being a perfect day! Thibaut even surprised me from Paris as we were sitting down to dinner! He said he had to work and fooled me all day and then showed up at the door right on time for dinner. So sneaky :) We of course went around the table and said what we were all thankful for, and everyone stayed after dinner to play games. We had a little French touch too, with some champagne and French cheeses. I missed my family, but I am lucky to have a lot of friends here to keep me company!

CPH

The last weekend in November, Thibaut and I headed for Copenhagen. We had planned the trip a long time ago, we usually don't plan ahead that well but we had to fly so we didn't have much of a choice! It just so happened that we booked the weekend the same weekend as our year anniversary, even though we didn't realize it at the time! So we'll just pretend we knew, and call it our "anniversary trip. "

We had to fly because Copenhagen is wayy further North than I ever realized. I think the only trains that go there are overnight, and I'd much rather spend an hour in a plane than an entire night in a claustrophobic bunk bed.

Copenhagen's somewhere I've wanted to go for so long, I always heard stories about it from my uncle, my grandpa, and the whole family. Tivoli Gardens is the amusement park that's in the middle of the city, and it always seemed like this magical fairy tale land when everyone used to describe it! Tivoli is usually closed in the winter, but they opened up for the Christmas markets, so I decided to take the opportunity to visit, since I've been trying to get up there for the past 2 years! I'm lucky that I live so close to the Paris airport now, it's easier to travel by plane.

The first day that we arrived, we just walked around, and got our bearings on the city. We were so shocked at how perfect and clean it was! Everything was just so nice and clean. It's pretty amazing for a big city. Even the trains, subways and buses are perfectly clean. My favorite place that I was the whole time I was there was the port area, called Nyhavn. All of the houses are different colors, and it's just a really unique looking port. There were Christmas markets and lots of restaurants there, so we had dinner there the first night. We went back everyday just to walk around. After dinner we tried to go to Tivoli, since I was talking about it for the past like 2 months I think Thibaut wanted to get me to be quiet about it! We headed over that way but were sooo disappointed when we saw how overcrowded the park was! There were so many people in there we wouldn't have been able to enjoy it, so we had to postpone our visit until Monday.

We noticed that Copenhagen's really close to Sweden, and I found out that they recently built a huge bridge connecting Denmark to Sweden. The closest town was called Malmö, so we figured we'd see what there was to do there. We got a train on Sunday morning, and when we arrived, realized there was nothing to do there! Our choices to eat were literally TGI Fridays or an extremely overpriced café. I think I whined the whole day. Oh and it was freezing and raining! Didn't help the situation at all. We ended up eating lunch in a grocery store and going back to Copenhagen in the early afternoon. BUT at least I can say I've been to Sweden!

Monday was our big "tourist" day. We actually got to see some sunshine which was really exciting! We started the day off with a canal boat cruise and saw more of the city. The guide was really informative, and as all Scandinavians do, he spoke perfect English. After that we made a long hike out to see the famous "little mermaid" statue that's facing the sea. I think it was inspired by Denmark-born Hans Christian Andersen, who was the guy that wrote the story of the Little Mermaid. After that, we were walking back to the city, and randomly came across the changing of the guards at the palace. It was the coolest thing! They march all around the square outside the palace, and you can follow them around and get as close to them as you want. Way better than in London, when they're like 200 meters away from you behind gates!

After that, we spent some time in the church near the Palace, where there was someone practicing the organ. It was like a free concert! We also climbed up the "round tower" to get a view of the city, did some shopping, etc. I think this day was my favorite.

That night we finally got to go to Tivoli! It of course was pouring rain :( not quite as magical as I expected it to be! It's really just like a small amusement park, but if I remember correctly, it was one of the first amusement parks in the world, where the idea was created. I can see how magical it could have been, but I think I'll have to go back in the summer or spring sometime! We couldn't go on the rides or anything because it was raining so hard. We even went back the next day for try #2 but it was still raining and freezing, so we didn't spend too much time there! We did get to eat some amazing sweets though, ice cream, waffles, everything! We also spent a lot of time playing games, they don't just have your typical carnival games there, they're much cooler. I'll look forward to the day I get to go back and see some sunshine!

Overall we had a really great trip, it was very cool to discover a new country and culture! All the people there were so nice! My favorite part of course was that there were 7/11's on every street corner, and it's legal to drink beer in the streets. That helped keep us warm on the coldest days. That's all for now, enjoy the pics!

The Little Mermaid

Climbing up the Round Tower to get a view of the city

The changing of the guards

Nyhavn, my favorite place

Sweden

Games in Tivoli

Thibaut's fave nickname!

inside Tivoli

The famous entrance