So I guess while it is still relatively fresh in my mind, I should write my update on my spring break trip. For an overview, and for those of you who wish to read no further than the surface level question, “oh my god, how was it?” It was phenomenal, and the best trip of my life and crazy and scary and maturing and revealing of how much I have left to grow and everything else that no one who hasn’t experienced a trip like that can ever understand. In fact, that’s how most of my experience here has been. Something that, no matter how many words I use to describe it, no matter how many pictures I show someone, they will never be able to understand, unless they’ve experienced it. They will never be able to understand how this trip has changed me, how it has molded my life, and I will never be able to fully explain it. But here I go trying my overview, my attempt, my window opening into a glimpse of what I have lived here.

A small triumph happened on this trip, a little gold star on my paper of life, one might say. This was the first time where I ever truly traveled on my own. I was, of course with friends, but this was really a first. I had been to South Padre on senior trip with friends before, but this was different, more complicated, foreign. And involving methods of transportation I had never before had experience with. I even hate to call this break ‘spring break’ as the term has so many negative, crazy, cancun and beach connotations, and this was so much more than that. So much better than that. And don’t worry, I still got a sunburn. But it wasn’t from being drunk on a beach passed out somewhere. No, it was from having some of the first sun I’ve seen in months, resting on a dam in the middle of the Arno river surrounded by artists and musicians soaking up the non-tourist life of Florence. But now I’m going off on a tangent.

So the day my spring break started, I hopped on my first train to take by myself ever to Dijon to meet my friends who are studying in Nantes this semester. Waiting in the freezing train station, I met a couple of ladies from New Zealand, who let me borrow their pen to fill in my europass as they complained about “more of those bloody pigeons” being in the station. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity for them, and they were taking full advantage of their eurotrip. Anyways, in Dijon it rained, and I stayed for a few hours in between train connections. Me and my friends took the mini shuttle, saw a few churches, ate some food, and saw of course, the original place of mustard, which for American tourists is generally the attraction of the area. Apparently, another specialty of that region is the gingerbread, which I of course had to try. And from that moment on, spring break became more of a food tour for me than anything else. And my gingerbread was excellent, warm and soft and dripping honey in the middle. So after our few hours in Dijon, which was really more than enough to see this tiny town properly, we headed to the train station to catch our first ever night train. Waiting for the train, we met a Canadian woman who was backpacking throughout Europe by herself for 3 months. She proceeded to give us endless, and mostly unnecessary or obvious travel tips, while freaking us out completely about us getting robbed or in essence being raped or killed just before boarding the night train. So basically she was very helpful.

So the night train. Never again. We did it to save on hostels and it was worth the experience just to say we survived, but it was extremely uncomfortable and entirely too long, it being 11 hours in length to Florence. We had what were called couchettes in second class, which were tiny little beds stacked 3 up that you had to crunch into with all your stuff. When we boarded the train around 9ish at night, there was already a couple asleep in our car, so our grand ideal of an awesome slumber party in a sense died instantly. Why they were asleep at 9 I have no idea. So, for lack of lighting or any way of avoiding the situation, we went to sleep. Or tried to. It’s slightly difficult when you have some creepy French dude sleeping directly across from you staring at you every time you open your eyes and knowing that you’re foreign. Thank God for hoods on sweatshirts though, because I definitely pulled that over my eyes and turned towards the wall to avoid the awkwardness. And it wasn’t too bad for a while. But then the little old couple decided that it was time to wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning, and they talked in loud voices for the rest of the night. Who goes to bed at 9 and then wakes up at 3 in the morning? Grrrr. But after our lovely night’s rest, we arrived at our destination at last. Or well, we thought we had. When we stepped off the train, we realized we were still one station away from where we needed to be.
But eventually we found our way to the condo, which happened to be right in the heart of Florence, literally maybe a 5 minute walk from the Duomo. And it was awesome. The people at the front desk were uber nice and cute little old Italian men, and our condo was very large for a european lodging. So the first day we wandered around and got a feel for the town. We saw the outside of the Duomo and then went into the Accademia museum and saw the enormous David by Michelangelo. Which was absolutely enormous and incredible and no picture can do it justice. Also in this museum were several of the ‘dying slaves’ by Michelangelo. They didn’t give any student discounts though, so that kind of sucked. And we soon came to find that nowhere in Florence was free, everything cost money to get into, completely unlike Paris, which is expensive of course, but easy to find awesome deals. So then we went to the outside of San Lorenzo and then trumped up the seemingly millions of stairs to the Piazza Michelangelo, which had the most incredible view of Florence. It was much better than paying to go up to the Duomo would have been. Up there we saw the church San Miniatta, or something like that. I should know the name, I looked at it, but it’s difficult to remember when it’s in a language you only know a little of. So after that, we made dinner at the condo and got gelato, then went and saw the outside of Santa Croce and the Biblioteca Nazionale. Then we decided to turn in a little early and recover from our night train experience.

Day 2 in Florence we actually went inside the Duomo. It was pretty, but they had a large section of it roped off, so it was difficult to see. Then we went to the Uffizi, but the line was without end so we decided to try back first thing the next morning. Next we went to the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge famous for its jewelry and then we walked past the Palazza Pitti on our way to the Boboli Gardens. We scratched the gardens idea though after we found out they wanted 9 euro for entrance and there was no student discount. So instead we went to a run down park of only locals just a short distance away. Of course, we also spent a lot of time wandering through the famous leather markets, and the weather was gorgeous, half the time I didn’t even need a jacket. For lunch that day, my friends and I wandered to a place far off the tourist track, that’s called Mercato Sant’Ambrogio, where I got a 2 course meal of amazing roasted chicken and roasted potatoes with bread and a bottle of water each for 8 euro, which for those of you who don’t know, is an incredible price. Afterwards, we got gelato of course and then went to the Mercato Centrale to get food for dinner. I was really lucky visiting Florence though, because I know a girl who lived there for a while, so she gave me a list of where to eat, what to see, where to go for the best gelato, etc, which ended up being the most useful and best thing ever.

The next day, my friends and I woke up bright and early to get to the Uffizi museum at 8 am, where there was already a line. A lot of it was undergoing renovation, so much wasn’t there, but I loved the set up of the museum. It was very logically ordered and easy to follow without a map. Again, there was no student discount for carriers of the international student card, so I used my French student id and pretended to be French and ended up getting into the museum for free! It was awesome and saved me like 7 euro! My favorite piece in the museum was the Doni Tondo, by Michelangelo, which I had studied in class and never thought was that cool before. But it was one of those paintings that I saw in real life that I came to understand was just absolutely phenomenal. The colors were so vibrant and pure and the frame was incredible and I stood in front of it for at least 10 minutes in absolute awe. I hate it when museums put glass in front of paintings though. I understand that it protects and all that, etc etc, but it makes it feel less accessible, less like it’s really there in front of you, and more like you’re just looking at a slide in art class. I like to be able to see the texture of the painting, since that’s what you miss by looking at it in a picture book. So next we wandered to the Piazza della Signoria and then the Palazzo Vecchio. We had gelato again and then lunch in an adorable little terrace restaurant.

After lunch we decided just to wander off the tourist track and see what we could find. I think we might have originally had a purpose behind our direction, but all that was forgotten when we saw people seemingly standing in the middle of the Arno river. What?! We had to figure out their secret and investigate. So we walked about a mile or so out of our way and found that they were actually sitting and walking on a dam in the middle of the river that had a bank like, beach thing on the side of it. So we found the entrance down there, and because the weather was warm, sunny, and breathtaking, with a little pinch of moisture in the air that cannot be found in Paris and was much missed, we decided to stay there for the rest of the afternoon. We took off our shoes, put our feet in the freezing water, which soothed their aching and swollenness from walking so much, and listened to people playing the guitar as we watched others drawing whatever inspired them. That was my favorite part of Florence I think. The idea of just chilling. And it was in Florence that I realized the difference between being a tourist and being on vacation. They don’t call Italy ‘La Dolce Vita’ for niente you know? I realized that there, it was all about taking things slow, enjoying everything for every short moment it lasted, and enjoying your food and your good company. So that’s exactly what I did for the rest of the trip.

Day 4 was spent in Siena, which is still in the region of Tuscany. We spent half our time and all the words of Italian I knew to find our way to the youth hostel, but in the end we made it and it was worth it. It was very cute and clean and an amazing first hostel experience for me. From there we took the bus back into town and saw the duomo and cathedral there and the main piazza and the fortress and the baptistery and everything. And there was one moment, when I was walking to this baptistery and stepped into the courtyard that surrounded it, with it’s beautifully created buildings surrounding me on 3 sides, and the most vivid blue sky with puffy white clouds you can ever imagine, and a man was there, playing the most sorrowful and heart wrenching and beautiful music you can ever imagine on his violin, and I looked up and there were these beautiful blackbirds soaring gracefully back and forth, back and forth across the sky as the sorrowful notes dripped like honey from this man’s bow. And everything seemed to slow down, and all the world around me seemed to stop, and everything except those birds and that music were suspended in time and I was so absorbed in that moment, I never wanted to leave it, and I prayed that it would last forever. It was something you can’t capture on a video, something you can’t capture with pictures, but something that you can capture in your heart, in your mind, in your soul, and there it will stay forever. And it is to that moment that I know I will recede everytime life gets hard, everytime I experience hurt, or pain, or suffer disappointment. Because that moment will never disappoint me. And leaving that moment was an abrupt recall to reality. But that moment of peace will always rest, perhaps sometimes hidden, in a corner of my heart.

So then we ate dinner in the heart of town and I tried my first cappucino ever and it was like trying clam chowder in Boston. It was the best and I can never go back to the other stuff I know. Especially since Italy is famous for its coffee. When we returned to the hostel, we stumbled across a real good find. We ran into a group of about 15-20 French students studying in Italy for the week. They were all aged about 25 or so, so we stayed and talked to them in French for about an hour or so. What’re the chances that in the region of Tuscany, Italy, we would find such a large group of French students? And the first thing they said when we said we were from Texas wasn’t the usual, “Do you like Bush?” or “Do you wear cowboy boots?” but “Sing us a country song!!” And my friend and I laughed hysterically and they were very disappointed when we said that neither of us really listens to country. But I guess there’s just breaking another stereotype for you.

So day 5 was spent in Pisa. Or rather, half of day 5. That’s all you really need to see Pisa in in my opinion and the opinions of several others, including my former Italian professor. We saw the leaning tower of course, and took our ridiculous pictures of us supporting it, me pushing it over, etc etc, nothing hundreds of other tourists weren’t doing in essence. We saw a church, and I got a book in English, “The Road” by Jack Kerouac, for the train back to Florence and then the night train we were taking that night to Nice to save on hostels. The best part of Pisa, in my opinion, was when we found the best restaurant ever, with absolutely no tourists in it, only locals. There, I got a giant bowl of 4 cheese gnocchi, a big plate of spinach, we got a big basket of bread and a cappucino for about 7 euro...an absolutely dirt cheap price for that good of a meal. And the food was delicious, and I was very extremely pleased and full.

In the waiting room for the night train, several things happened. Some guy who had drawn a picture of something we understood to be Jesus, but couldn’t be, because Jesus doesn’t have boobs, at least not in the interpretations I’ve seen, gave us a drawing and proceeded to talk to us in Italian, of which we maybe understood three things he said. Some cops hassled someone else, who happened to look exactly like my grandaddy, and it was hilarious because of the reaction of the room. Whereas in most cultures, people ignore when things like this happen, Italians do the exact opposite. In fact, some of them stood up, turned around and avidly stared at what was happening, talking to the cops and the guy, adding their opinions, yelling at each other, and I couldn’t help but laugh hysterically, if only because that is exactly what happens in my own family so often.

So we took another night train, and this one was, for me, more uncomfortable than the last. My friends were in first class, but I was in second class in a chair place. For those of you who don’t understand exactly what that entails, it is not anything like an airplane seat. In fact, there are 6 seats in a little compartment and they recline into each other. Luckily there were only 4 people in my compartment, but that didn’t save me from having this box thing in the window sticking into my back the full 9 hours as the freezing air-conditioning blew directly on me. Originally, I was supposed to be in another compartment, and so were all the people that ended up in mine, but this entire Asian family was already asleep in there. Luckily the other girl in the compartment, who was Italian, could speak French, so we used that as our common language to communicate with each other. The girl ended up being from Rome, and was actually incredibly nice and helpful. All the other people in my compartment were Italian also, so most of the time they spoke in Italian, and I could understand a little bit of it, but sometimes they would translate into French for me. So the whole conversation was held with them speaking mostly Italian and a little French, and me speaking mostly French and a little Italian. But it was an awesome experience, and originally, they all thought I was actually French, until I told them I was from the United States, and then they were just shocked, because they said I didn’t have an American accent at all when I was speaking French, which for those of you who don’t know, is an enormous compliment coming from Europeans. They hate the American accent speaking French almost more than anything else. The Italian girl was very nice though, and actually reminded me a lot of my sister, although she was older than I. So after a night of not sleeping, we arrived in Nice, our final destination for the time being.

Less than 5 minutes after arriving in Nice, some guy, Nice is infamous for this, came up to us and asked if he could hang out with us. At least he asked. It was interesting too, because I had always heard that Italian guys were worse than French guys, but actually I found them much nicer overall. They were much more gentlemanly in my opinion. They held open doors, or in one instance, helped me with one when it wouldn’t open, and they helped with suitcases when they were too heavy to lift, and overall I found they had much more respect, at least on a surface level, for women than the French guys I have met. And above all, they gave us GIANT scoops of gelato, and ended up getting yelled at for it because they gave us about twice the normal size.

So we arrived in Nice to gorgeous weather, of more sun and warmth, although for some reason I was still cold, which is why I now have tan lines where my sweater was, and we wandered the beach and the markets and the old city with its tower and a waterfall. And it was interesting, because I had been to Nice before, but almost everything I saw was a completely new experience, something I had never before known existed. So after climbing up and down more stairs at the tower, we went to what I believe is spelled St. Reparate church, a baroque style church which was my favorite I had seen so far. It was much more in the Italian style than churches in Paris: much lighter, more open, more colorful. So for dinner that night, we had traditional food from the Provence region, including pallerdiere, a bread with onions, ratatouille, and vegetable beignets, since we were sick of Italian food by then. And seriously, after Italian food, how can one eat non-Italian, Italian food? After dinner, we went to an Irish pub and watched Barcelona play Manchester United in football as I drank a pint of Guiness with young and old pot-bellied, or beer-bellied, rather, British men.

The next day we walked up an enormous hill to get to the Matisse Museum, which the lady owning our hotel had said was not worth it, but which I happened to adore. They had a large collection of his drawings, which I had never really before been exposed to, and I absolutely loved them. Not to mention, Matisse is basically my favorite artist. I love his use of color and especially his drawings. For sake of not walking all the way down the hill too, we opted to take the bus and have lunch on the beach. The weather was beautiful our entire stay and I could even take my sweater off some, though I didn’t too much for fear of sunburn. We spent the afternoon on the beach of rocks, because they don’t have sandy beaches there, and had a snack dinner that night in the hotel for the sake of being exhausted. Our hotel was absolutely the most precious thing ever, and we had a little balcony and our own bathroom, all of which are good things when you don’t pay too much. And we had a completely Eurotrip moment. You know, the stupid humor, play up the stereotypes, American movie about a backpacking trip across Europe? Well, it all happened as we stood in the little hotel kitchen to make our frozen pizza when we realized that there was no oven in this kitchen. So we decided that since we had already bought the freaking thing we might as well try the microwave. And as we tested this doomed hypothesis, these two Dutch guys came in wearing identical “Federer” shirts. As we had no clue who this was, we asked, much to their shocked and scandalized surprise. It turns out they had roadtripped to Nice to watch this tennis player in a tournament. Originally they thought we were European. They started out cute, but then they just got really creepy. And, at the risk of over-generally stereotyping, I’ve realized that Dutch guys are freaking weird. And all I could think of the whole time he was attempting and failing miserably to hit on us in his broken, accented English was, “Dude, your fly’s unzipped.” So that ended in us throwing away our ruined pizza and retreating into our room before they could find out which one was ours.

The next day we took the train to Nantes, in the Northwest of France. At least this trip was during the day, it was another 9 hour voyage. But this time, we got to see the countryside of France float past us, and since we were traveling parallel to the ocean half the time, it was gorgeous, and we got out at Marseilles, where we had 15 minutes to transfer trains. In Nantes, I stayed with my friend, who’s studying there, at her homestay. I didn’t even meet her hostess, but realized she must be the cutest person ever, because she had set up a mattress with blankets for me, and put a towel, washcloth, bar of soap, and cookies on my pillow. That night, we made dinner and chilled and watched a movie. The dinner making was a hilarious process though, as cultural misunderstandings and language translation confusions constantly got in our way in ragingly humorous manners. First, we went to the grocery store with the intent of buying rice, which we succeeded at doing, or so we thought. We had bought a yellow bag that was in the rice section at least. It was only while attempting to cook it that we realized it wasn’t rice at all, but wheat. Yep, that’s right. Wheat. At least, as her host dad pointed out, while he wasn’t much of a fan of it, at least we would never get sick if we kept eating it. So we laughed it off and moved on to making our canned corn. We needed a can opener first though, and so we asked her host dad for one. He proceeded to hand us this pointy thing with a sharpish part on the end. After several failed attempts at figuring out how the crap this thing worked, we ran upstairs to plead with the French student renting lodging to show us how to open it. He started to open the can for us. Okay, we got it now, surely we could get the rest open....Yea, he so made it look easier than it was. After about another 10 minutes of not opening our corn, we finally pryed the little bit that was open with a spoon just enough to get the corn to pour out. Later we asked the host dad about that can opener and he said they had actually changed to it from the turny kind because it was “easier.” Ha. Okay.

So we ate our little field of corn and wheat and poured tears into it all because we were laughing so hard. That night we crashed early to prepare ourselves for the next day. In the morning of the next day, which was a Saturday, we rode bikes into the center of Nantes to go to a little market place. The bike-riding was definitely an experience. And I never realized how out of shape I am not being able to work out this semester and how much my hostesses’ smoking has affected my lungs when I couldn’t breathe at all when biking. After putting those scary things away, we went and saw the big, mechanical, robot elephant, which was actually really awesome. Next, she showed me the cathedral and the duomo of the city, and once more, the weather was gorgeous. It was sunny, and actually hot. At one point, we receded into the duomo just for the stone coolness of the interior. We returned to her homestay, where we sat on the back porch overlooking the Loire river and ate an American style lunch. I actually found cheetos at the grocery store, so we had those, French style grilled cheeses, which just means a slice of enmental/cheddar mix instead of kraft, tomato soup, and specialty Nantes caramels with creme brulee ice cream and orangina as we listened to French radio. That night we ate dinner at a creperie and then went to find seats for the Carnaval, which was a giant parade and was really cool because I had never seen a parade in real life before. And there was this one float that had a scottish dude on it with his kilt flown up revealing his boxers as these people played my high school song on the bagpipes and people actually danced liked we did at old pep rallies. And that was one of those deja vu, small world moments that completely caught me off guard and brought rushing back a million funny memories and scary moments.

So the next day I caught my train back to Paris and was surprised to feel how much like coming home my return was. And that was my spring break in a nutshell, though, like I said, one cannot possibly condense all my experiences to the page, or to the reader. There are so many experiences that just have to live inside me, giving me life, and sustaining me until my next adventure. And my sincerest hope for those of you, if any, who have read this far, is that one day you can have one of those trips where you realize that no one can understand, no one can fully grasp the truth and the experience of it all, because it was too overwhelming, too life-changing, too inexpressible.