I Have Arrived in Saas-Fee

This is the view from my window in Saas-fee. It is very hard to describe what it is like. The mountains you see in this photo surround us.

I arrived yesterday after a beautiful train ride and a harrowing bus ride. After getting here... Well the social climate is as hard to put into words as the physical climate. I may have to attempt this in conversation with each one of you since there is so much to say and so many ways to express it. I like my classmates a lot, each one is incredibly unique.

It is lunch time on my first day and I can aleady tell you the structure of my days. I get up and swim in the pool, go to breakfast, read and write, go to the first class, eat lunch, talk with classmates, read and write and nap, go to second class, eat dinner, go to evening lecture. That is about it.

I will probably not be posting while I am here, but will continue when I finish. I will email personally from time to time (Wade, Peter and Louisa - you are overdue for one from me) and feel free to drop a line anytime. I will let you know when I continue traveling, but for now I am in the clouds!
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Berit's New Motto: Not Fall & Crawl, Instead Fall & Ride a Hog

There are no photos for this one. And I'll explain the title of this post in a bit.

I wasn't planning on posting today since it was more of the same, studying and reading. I did meet up with one of my new classmates tonight for dinner and we hit it off great. He's from Madrid and already has a politcal science doctorate but wants to continue his studies. It was a good meal.

Then I got on the tram, the very last one of the evening to go the twenty minute ride to my far away hotel. Four stops in I realize that I don't recognize ANY stop names. I am on the wrong train yet again... This time in the middle of the night in Geneva. I get off fully prepared to walk but eyeing ATM possibilities to get a cab - very expensive. I fell.

Not literally, but it goes back to my mother's story about how I learned to walk. I'd start straight out across the middle of the room and fall but make it my crawling. Much of my life has followed suit, I go for where I need to get to and if I happen to fall, I'll crawl. Which is what I was prepared to do this evening.

So I found an ATM and a gentleman was just finishing. He asked me in French if the fireworks went off yet (it is like 4th of July tonight) but he had an English-American accent so I asked him if it was easy to get a cab or where to go. He said it was a pretty busy night and I told him I took the wrong train. We said where we were from, he's from New York. A couple full cabs passed as I tried to get more francs but he said he would give me a ride on his Harley Davidson. I wasn't sure but he gave me his card, he's worked for the UN for 13 years, so I trusted him and took a ride around Geneva on a very American bike! We even took a detour around old town Geneva with its winding tiny cobblestone streets! And of course I got home fine. And it was a lot better than crawling or walking or taking a cab.

It is such a strange story I had to relate it straight away. And now time for bed because I have to go to school tomorrow!
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Somewhere In Between

Sorry the posts are coming less frequently, but I have less and less things to relate on a travel blog. I have been dutifully getting ready for a very intense next three weeks. The photo displayed here is of the hallway between the lift and my room here in Geneva. It is rather like a scene from a David Lynch film or a William Burrough's Interzone (sans heroin). But more about the in-betweenness later.

Yesterday I gathered up all my belongings in the dark of the hostel, the roommates all snug in their beds. I took a taxi to the train station and took the very fast train to Lyon. I have to say that out of all the modes of travel my favorite is by train.

At the Lyon station I had the perfect amount of time to get to my next train, but in my confidence I was not careful to see how many trains were at one platform and I got on the one to Evian, not Geneva! Luckily I was able to jump off at a stop in Bellegarde and jump on to the Geneva bound train before the three trains separated. Whew!

Arriving in Geneva, I got my Swiss Francs and made a reservation for Marseille later this month for I did not want to be left without much choice. The ticket guy said he didn't usually make reservations like this but since I had a Eurail pass and I was making a reservation so far ahead of time that he would. I guess most Eurail people try to get on a train the day of... Perhaps this was my problem in Paris, that usually the last minute Eurail pass holders requests are annoying so she put me on the worst train. This ticket guy was very nice and even got me on first class on a train that leaves midday. Then it'll be on to Marseille and holidays again!

Switzerland doesn't feel like a holiday at all. After doing all my train station errands I went to take the tram which was easy enough and went to my hostel which is ON the border of Switzerland and France. There is a TON of room for one person and very conducive for studying. I did some of that yesterday and then went to eat near the lake. It was good and I have to say that Paris still has the best ice cream. Swiss ice cream IS exceptionally good, but Parisian ice cream still has a quality that is superior.

I walked around a bit but I didn't take any pictures. I'll be here for quite a bit longer on the way back through so then will be more sightseeing. My impression of the few blocks I saw of Geneva is that this is where the people on the pages of glossy magazines come from. Not really my style. Paris is very European, true, and it can be terribly stylish, but there's a roughness, a poetic quality perhaps. Geneva is very European and very stylish, but clean and business-like. Meh.

This morning I have stayed on the French side. I got a chasson de pommes at the patisserie - an apple croissant - and two coffees at this cafe where I saw two bikers! They were big and wore some leather and were drinking at noon, but they were drinking rosé and had very nicely coiffed long grey hair.

And now I'm back in my room reading and writing and trying not to be intimidated by this coming week's studies. I feel it is somewhat proper to be staying on the border between here and there... In a no man's land. It is a rich space for thought. Or so I think.

I will post one more time from Saas-Fe letting you all know I arrived safely, but then I will only perhaps be posting sporadically until the 23rd of August where I will pick up where I left off, here in the borderlands.
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Taking a Break On the Walk Down From Sacre Cœur

The breeze is soft and warm as I walk back from a stop inside Sacre Cœur. I'm about to repack my bags again in preparation for my early train to Geneva. Then I'll take a shower in the tiny shower that too push a button and it sprays for twenty seconds and stops before getting to bed early enough to have some kind of consciousness as I travel tomorrow.

Today was mellow. I went to the graveyard and followed up with a big three course lunch. You can see the pictures on Flickr except for dessert which was two scoops of ice cream, one chocolate and the other vanilla. French ice cream is by far the best.

I'll be posting a couple more times until Sunday but I'll start again the last week of August!
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Morning in Montparnasse

The view is from my morning coffee near the one tall building in Paris proper. I took the Metro from the north of the city to the south so I can take a walk through the cemetery where Beckett, Beauvoir and Sartre's bones turn to dust.

Yesterday was a busy but uneventful day. When I woke I found that Pia, the still nameless Italian girl and I had gotten a new roommate in the night named Pablo. We all discussed our plans for the day, mine being the arduous task of finding the correct train station to depart from for Geneva and making a reservation. Pablo uses Eurail passes and offered to help me out. He went with me and we finally got to the right counter in the right train station but the woman (who did not speak one word of English) told me there were no reservations to be had. She finally found one at five in the morning that had a lay over in Lyon. I booked it and then had to figure out if it would be best to cancel my hostel for the night before and spend it in the train station or what, the issue being that the Metro doesn't start running at that time. After much deliberation, with the help of well-travelled Pablo, I've decided to keep the room so I can sleep a little and with the taxi stand near our hostel I can probably get one for cheap since there will be no traffic at that time.

Other than that fiasco, Pablo and I walked around the streets of Paris and the Pére Lachaise cemetery stopping at cafes to get reading done. It was nice to have a companion. He is a junior at Columbia University in advanced mathematics (Brian Green is his professor!) and we talked a lot about books and theory. It was also nice to talk with someone who lives in the US although he's originally from Mexico City.

At dusk we grabbed sandwiches and a bottle of wine to go meet Pia and her friends at the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower. I apologize for not having much time to post yesterday (yes, I'm just fine, Mom). I'll have more time when I get to Geneva, but I'm not sure how interesting they'll be, I still have a bit of work to do before school starts in a few days! I'm ready to settle in one place for three weeks, to move into a room and focus on why I'm here in Europe--to begin my Master's thesis!

And now I'm on my way to thank some of the progenitors of my interest, although they live much more through their writing than in their bones, I still want to pay my respects.
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View From a Paris Hostel

I'm not sure exactly what time it is but it seems I've got the room to myself for a bit. I'm not minding the company, it seems appropriate that there always seems to be something going on--very Paris. I just checked the time, I guess it is almost midnight here. My schedule has changed quite radically from the bed at ten regime.

Last night I wandered through the Latin quarter and back up to my hostel, thoroughly enjoying the beautiful night. As I was approaching the hostel I ran into my Australian roommate, Pia. She and her friend Leo were looking for fun so we went down to a discotheque in Pigalle. At first they told us twenty euro to get in but as we were turning around to go one of the bouncers said we could go ahead in. We all danced, but I might have danced a bit more in the elated state I was in. It was nice to enjoy a night out with people instead of alone. When we left at 3:30am the club was really starting to get crowded. It was interesting to see the Paris nightlife.

Perhaps needless to say, I woke a little later and took my time getting ready. By the time I headed out I decided to go straight to a croque monsieur across from Notre Dame. I got a bunch of reading done as I made way through a ham sandwich smothered in broiled, gooey cheese. Yum!

Since it was rainy I decided that I would go to Centre Georges Pompidou since I missed an entire floor last year. I got there about two or three and was there until 9:30! So much to say about it but the main things were that they changed things up and over half of the artists they showed in their permanent collection were women. This is quite amazing. Women artists are often sidelined and under represented. There was also a huge showing of Kandinsky's work. It was interesting to see his progression through life.

Afterwards I grabbed a salad near the museum, hot goat cheese on toast, greens and tomatoes. Both places I ate today were dim and it seemed conspicuous to flash my super bright flash to take a picture. More tomorrow I promise.

Now I'm back, hoping to sleep well, we'll see if my roommates wake me when they get in. Thankfully I have one of those eyepatch things...
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Holy *#!??@$+*

Another post so soon, and I haven't been talking a lot about my food. But I have to go off... I cannot contain myself. Tears came to my eyes as I ate and I thought of Erin when she cried the first time she tried foie gras here in Paris.

But I had something I love ordering anywhere, a niçoise salad. It was a religious experience. The butter lettuce was like sinking my teeth into the most delicate parchment, the tuna was like cake--sweet and soft. The potatoes tasted like golden sunshine and the peppers sparkled and burst, simply burst with fresh. Seriously though, the green beans were what brought tears to my eyes. A legitimate twinge at the corners if my eyes, me! who never leaks (unless it is something so consuming as my sister's wedding of course!). The beans were only blanched but they melted on my tongue, not unlike butter... But more so like meringue but made with cream, not egg white. And the anchovies! They were salty and not stinky at all... More like love poems from the sea.

Okay, okay... But still! Can you blame me? I'm in Paris, a place I didn't think I'd be so soon. There's coffee on every corner and a bookstore every two. And wine! My plan tonight is to find the Rue de la Huchette from -Hopscotch- yes, Erin, I'll see it. It comes from a passage in the novel by Julio Cortazar: (paraphrased or pretty close) Yes, but who will cure us of the dull fire, the colorless fire that runs along the Rue de la Huchette at night fall?

And so, enraptured, I go into the Parisian evening.
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