I
take the train to work every Thursday and save all of my tickets so I can be
reimbursed at the end of each term. It felt like I’d been back from Dusseldorf
for about three days and was utterly dumbfounded when I added the last two
tickets to the paper clipped stack of six weeks’ worth of teaching. I have no
idea where the last term went. It’s been a whirlwind of throwing together
lesson plans, reading a shedload of books and consuming a gallon or so of Loire
region wine. I went to an Ed Sheeran concert in Nantes, finally got round to
reading Le Petit Prince and booked
all manner of exciting trips to carry me through until the end of the academic
year.
When
I got back to France in January I decided I needed to speak a hell of a lot
more French and so we decided to start going to Café des Langues, a fortnightly gathering of internationals who
want to practise their foreign languages or offer up their native tongue to
other language learners. Over a few drinks we made friends with some lovely
Brazilians who are studying at the university in Le Mans and have since been
welcomed into their huge friend group of dozens of international students.
Being a language assistant is great, but making new friends when most of the
people you interact with are younger than ten can be a bit tricky. Our weekends
now consist of dinner soirées, beer pong tournaments, museum trips, cinema
jaunts and Cuba Libres in our beloved Mulligan’s pub with a myriad of people
from all over the world, where our main mutual language is French. I’m finally
making some real French progress and the headaches from entire French days are
slowly becoming less debilitating. RESULT.
Anyway,
the end of a term means yet another half term break (I swear I work sometimes),
this time taking form in a trip to the Berlin International Film Festival with
my friend Jennifer from uni and a Megabus extravaganza through Brussels, Bruges
and Amsterdam with my house mate Alicia.
BERLIN
I
caught a train to Paris on February 6th, stayed in Jennifer’s minuscule yet adorable Parisian flat and the following morning dragged
ourselves onto the RER at an ungodly hour for our early morning flight to
Berlin TXL. We spent the first day wondering around the various ticket outlets
trying to get into Charlotte Rampling’s new film with Tom Courtenay, 45 Years, and eventually managed to
score tickets for a 10pm showing (cue happy dance). In betwixt queuing in the
rain, film programme in hand, we managed to get sehr, sehr lost on the metro, check
out the Berlin Film Museum – absolutely brilliant – wander round Potsdamer
Platz and see the Holocaust Memorial and Brandenburg Gate just as it was
getting dark. With three hours to kill before the film screening we decided to
find a bar near the cinema, a seemingly simple task, we were in Berlin for Pete’s
sake. Apparently not. After about an hour of shuffling our slowly dying feet
through identical, barless streets, mistaking luminous, rope light teeth as bar
signs (I kid you not, German dentists could be mistaken for a night club), we
finally spotted a Mexican restaurant – rum AND nachos; life was brilliant. 45 Years, when we finally got there, was
a wonderful film and I’m über excited to check it out again when
it’s properly released. The next day we wandered through Alexanderplatz, went
to the Dom cathedral to get a gorgeous view of Berlin’s skyline and went and
queued some more to try and get tickets for Christian Bale’s new film Knight of Cups. Two hours of waiting in the cold & yet
again more cries of ‘ausgebucht’. Sold out again.
But
all wasn’t in vain, we’d been stood next to the Berlinale Palast and managed to
spot Ian McKellen on the red carpet before the premiere of his new Sherlock
Holmes film. Happy dancing all round. We also decided to get tickets on a whim
for a Spanish film to make our hours of standing in the cold somewhat
worthwhile. Turns out it was a documentary film about Chilean rivers or
something. I have no idea. Ashamed to say I fell asleep within the first twenty
minutes.
Determined
to see Knight of Cups, one of the big
films of the festival, we got up early on our last full day to try and get
tickets for a re-screening. Naturally it was sold out again, but we were told
they might find some more tickets if we were willing to wait two hours until an
hour before it began. We still have no idea where exactly they were procuring
seats in a sold out venue, but whatever, three hours later we were sat, ticket
in hand, through a terribly disappointing 119 minutes of Christian Bale slowly
spiralling out of control. Wunderbar. Next up was Ian McKellen’s Mr Holmes, which we’d thankfully managed
to get tickets for online. It was utterly fantastic and I’m very glad we ended
the festival on a decent film that actually had some plot (& obvs Ian
McKellen – all hail).
All
in all, we queued a lot, saw a lot of films and somehow managed to go to Berlin
and without once properly stepping foot on Unter den Linden, but w/e. Berlin
became one of my favourite cities and we missed out enough of the main sights
to warrant a repeat trip. I’m already peeing with excitement.
BELGIUM
After
a quick pit stop in Le Mans to quickly repack and pick up Alicia, we were soon
in Porte Maillot coach park waiting for our Megabus from Paris to Brussels. We
arrived at 15:00 and had a few hours to kill before we could meet our AirBNB
host to dump our rucksacks in our temporary flat. After navigating ourselves
with a trusty bus stop map we made our way to the Grand Place to gawp at the
gorgeous buildings in the city’s main square, found the underwhelming yet
hilarious Manneken Pis, walked around the cathedral and realised we’d ticked
off half of our itinerary in the first 45 minutes. Excellent. Time for waffles.
Also excellent. Eventually we made it to our BNB, gave our aching shoulders some
light relief and struggled with wifi that only worked in the doorway to the
apartment block. Perfect when all the inhabitants were coming home from work
and we had a tonne of directions to research. All the apologies.
Next
on the agenda was a train ride to Bruges where we befriended a crazy German (?)
man who repeatedly asked the same question about the towel situation in hostels
about 8 times. Too early for your nonsense, leave us alone crazy man. Kthxbye.
The weather was pretty decent so we were able to enjoy a long day wandering around
the city, ogling at pretty buildings and canals and lusting after waffle
stands. Willing to go to ridiculous lengths for a city view, we I
thought it’d be a good idea to climb the Belfry in the main square, so 366
steps we dizzily dragged ourselves onto the observation level of the tower and ogled
some more at Bruges’s pretty rooftops and tried our best to not be in the back
of some French lady’s utterly pointless video while we slowly keeled over,
panting to death. Note to self, stop being a wimp. Later, we visited the
chocolate museum, because Belgium, and were thoroughly amused by the excessive
use of Playmobil and terrifying wax works (I have no idea either). It was a bit
naff – understatement - but it was warm and had welcoming trays of free samples
(yay for poorness).
On
Saturday, we tracked down all the places we’d missed in Brussels, including the
Atonium, Royal Palace, the BELvue museum of Belgium, Coudenberg and the museum
of musical instruments, before settling down in a bar for some well-earned
Belgian beers. Not too shabby.
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| Brussels |
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| Bruges |
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| Bruges |
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| Brussels |
AMSTERDAM
Sunday
morning found us back on the Megabus on our way to Amsterdam, a beautiful city
with far too many human beings and seemingly even more bikes. I’m still not
entirely sure what I thought of Amsterdam. It’s a stunning city with a
fascinating history, excellent food – everyone needs bitterballen and
poffertjes in their life – some world class museums and obviously all the taboo
tourist traps that have become synonymous with the Dutch capital for all who
wish to partake. It’s a wonderful place but something just felt a bit off.
After
dumping our bags in our hostel, we didn’t really have a plan so decided to walk
through the Museumplein and up the Prinsengracht canal to find the Anne Frank House.
On our way, we found the Fault in our Stars bench (because book nerds), I added
to the hundreds of messages by carving my name (because Nerdfighter) and
shamelessly corrected someone’s French grammar (because lame nerd). We strolled
along the canal and checked out a few hipsterry antique and clothes shops
before eventually finding Prinsengracht 263, AKA the Anne Frank House. The
queue was absolutely enormous so we decided to return early the next morning
and went and found somewhere to eat. We made it back at 8:30am the following
day and already found a sizeable queue snaking along the side of the building. Ridiculous. But we joined the end and shivered for about two hours until we
finally made it through the doors and into the museum. The house’s history
certainly resonates through the building with short excerpts from the diary
printed on the walls and at Otto Frank’s request, is now devoid of any
furniture to represent the emptiness left after the Holocaust. It’s a haunting
place but an absolute must-visit.
After
filling up on bitterballen we headed out on a free walking tour which took us around
the city centre, old town, Jordaan neighbourhood and the Red Light District. It
was still relatively early in the evening so this hedonistic playground was
still quite tame with only a small number of occupied windows, one of which by
a woman playing Candy Crush on her iPad. Whatever floats your boat. One of the
coffee shops in the area – famous for selling all manner of substances
definitely stronger than coffee – was blaring out Roxanne by The Police. The
irony.
Tuesday
was our last day in Amsterdam and the last day of our February travels. We
started early with a 9am slot at the Van Gogh museum, celebrated Pancake Day
with Dutch bacon pancakes and wandered through Vondel Park. In the late
afternoon we headed over to Body Worlds, a human preservation/plastination
museum and the strangest and most surreal place I’ve ever visited. The building
is full of over 200 ‘anatomical specimens’ of preserved human bodies.
Absolutely mental. It could be an unsettling place but once I stopped thinking
ZOMG THS WAS A REAL PERSON WITH A HOUSE AND A JOB AND PROBABLY A PET CAT it
became quite interesting. Body Worlds is a fascinating museum and if anything,
it made me want to run everywhere and only eat lettuce and kale for the rest of
my life. I’m definitely glad we went, even if I do see a spine every time I go
to sleep. Grim.
At
21:30 we picked up our bags from the hostel and made our way to the Megabus
pick up spot in a coach park just outside the city. We were due to leave at
23:00, arriving in Paris at 6:00 the following morning, where we’d catch the
train back to Le Mans at 7:00. Unfortunately, Megabus had other ideas and
decided to turn up just before 1am. How kind. There’s nothing like shivering in
a car park for two hours while an operator in Glasgow informs you she’s not
quite sure when the bus is due to arrive while sporadically making you listen
to diabolical hold music to make you absolutely love life. But we made it home
eventually, albeit five hours later than expected. Damn you Megabus. I hope at
some point in my life I’ll be able to visit other countries without using
terrible coaches and staying in nasty hostels with a back pack filled with
packets of ramen noodles and bags of sawdust masquerading as cereal bars. But
whatever, it’ll certainly do for now.
Miles
out. X
