Just one year ago I was learning how to swim, and now in 2012 I find my self swimming from France to Spain.
But I guess I'll explain that later.
The best place to start after all is at the beginning.
As of this thursday, QKAP are finally able to abandon 18 of our usual 24 class hours a week! To celebrate the ending of institute classes/Sara's 21st birthday, Dr. Kruger allowed us to plan a brand new Davidson weekend trip. A few weeks ago we were assigned to research a city in France where we would like to spend a weekend. I picked Strasbourg. Keith and Ashley played the "let's blindly put our fingers on google maps". But Paisley, who had been adamantly pushing for us going to the Pyrenees Mountains since we met her, convinced Dr. Kruger that we needed to visit the city of Perpignan, a small city near the Mediterranean sea and within 50 km of the Spanish border. To give ya'll some bearings, I have provided a map:
The end of the institute was rather sad. The team has made some really good friends while here, and though the majority will be returning next month, it is sad to see some of them leave. We haven't gotten our grades either, but im pretty sure that all of our GPAs will be safe.
After our final exams on wednesday and our last Wine and Cheese class on thursday, the Fellowship (minus Jane) took a foot off of our doorsteps and headed off into the east in search for adventure.
I have expressed on this blog before my theory that our group is actually the Fellowship of the Ring, right? It would be really awkward if I haven't and none of my readers will have understood that allusion above. Well yeah! There are nine of us (including John Beam, Dr. Kruger's life partner) and we go on crazy adventures exploring the little seen details of France. There are the four new members (the Hobbits), the three veterans, and our wise teacher. (I'll leave it up to you readers to match the characters to QKAPS JeBeK). I digress. Let's continue.
The fellowship started out from Tours on Friday morning to catch a train to Paris. We discovered here that the National System of Railroads isn't always perfect. They issued two tickets for the same seat (mine and some innocent old french lady that might or might not have forged hers) I think I also forgot to mention that Keith, Paisley, Blake, and I have a life long spades game going. Right now, Blake and I are up by over a hundred points with a few sandbags. When we are all old and wrinkly, I think Keith and Paisley will realize that their strategy of making us underestimate our bets was a poor choice.
Anywho, we made a transfer in Paris from Gare Montparnasse to the Gare de Lyon and there, we picked up a must curious companion. This companion didn't appear to speak any intelligible sentences but we could understand some simple phrases such as "Merci" and "Bonjour" and "Je t'aime". Perhaps we pitied her, but we decided to take her along on our voyage to the southeastern corner of the country.
Just kidding.
Actually, our companion's name was Emily Wilkes!
For those of you that don't know Emily, she is kind of a big deal. She goes to Davidson and was one of my roommates last year and will hopefully be my roommate again next year (if RLO can get up on its room assignments) and the year after that! When Dr. Kruger proposed this weekend trip a month ago, I was afraid that this would interfere with Emily's previously planned trip to Tours. But luckily, she was able to come with us and explore the side of France that not many people get to enjoy!
To fit in with our Lord of the Rings Motif, Emily decided that she wanted to be the Smeagol to our Fellowship. (Not Gollum. The group decided she was way to kind and enthusiastic to be fit into the persona of the skulking envious mountain creature) And when I said she kept uttering unintelligible phrases, I really meant that throughout the two days that she was with us she kept trying to teach us phrases in Danish, and I believe only two of them stuck.
Jeg elsker dig- I love you Je t'aime
And something else that sounds a lot like Loo-guh-lee which means Happy.
After about an eight hour trip, we finally managed to make it into the city of Perpignan. The train station apparently had one of it's walls or ceiling painted by Salvador Dali! He has been recorded as saying that the train station at Perpignan was one of his favorite places.
This might or might not be the ceiling that he painted but it was the only mural-y sort of thing we could find in the whole station, and there were pictures of him all over the lobby.
The street that lead from our hotel to the train station was filled with Kebab places (9 to be exact), and our hotel was rather quaint! They gave us tons of free candy.
Friday night, we went out and celebrated Sara's birthday and discovered that there weren't many restaurants that offered a vegetarian option for Paisley except for Italian restaurants. We ate Italian for three nights.
The first night though was special. Sara even got sparklers in her fondant chocolat!
Saturday however, was when our adventuring really began. The team woke up early and hopped a train that took us into the mountains for a little bit of hiking. We were to go to Mt. Canigou, the mountain that was once thought of to be the highest in all of the Pyrenees. We have since been told that with the abandonment of medieval measuring techniques, this is now not true, but it was still pretty freaking big.
I hope by now ya'll realize that I give you a soundtrack to listen to with these blogposts. If you haven't listened to any of the songs I've embedded, I would start clicking the play button everytime you run into one of these youtube clips. Just saying. (This one goes over the last one quite nicely!)
Saturday morning's train ride was a lot like Disney's thunder mountain railroad. We went up and down and right ways and left ways, all to end up in this really cool little mountain town. It was pretty old and mostly deserted. Someone gave us the direction to this really old Abbey all the way up on the mountain, and we started our approx 10 km trek.
It was lucky that it was such a nice day. There was hardly a cloud in the sky and the sun was very forgiving (especially to Keith, who we are all pretty sure got at least two shades darker). My feet were fine, and it became kind of a struggle once we were forced to actually start climbing the mountain.
We walked along the french highway, dodged some cars and debated whether or not it was smarter to walk with or against traffic. We didn't run into any wildlife, nor did we see a bald eagle flying majestically through the hills, but what we did see were palm trees in the same sight-line as the snow capped mountain peek. Incroyable!
It occurred to me that moutains would be really difficult to climb in a blizzard. I'm pretty sure I asked Paisley that if she were headed to Mordor and came across the Misty Mountains would she rather go up the snowyy mountain path or down through the mines of Moria about thirty four times.
All I can say though was that the view was absolutley gorgeous. The subtle greens in the browns of the cliff faces and the large valleys allowed us all to enjoy every second we spent hiking up to the ancient Abbey of St. Martin.
I couldn't really tell you the history of the Abbey itself, nor could Emily who was given a handout explaining the history in English because she accidentally littered it on the way down, but I could tell you that the structure was beautiful and has a brilliant view of the surrounding valley.
Once we finished our tour, we ran down the path from the Abbey to the rest of civilization and hopped on a bus that took us back to the train station and back to the hotel.
After a short dinner, where Emily almost successfully ordered her first meal in full french "Une Omelette au Fromage et Jambon", we said goodbye to our wonderfully enthusiastic fantastically fabulous hyperbole using companion and sent her on a night train back to Paris. It will be short lived though. You know how Sam and Frodo thought they lost Smeagol during their battle with the horrifying giant spider Shelob, and he ended up making the ascent of Mt. Doom anyway? Yeah, we're going to see Emily again very soon.
Sunday was a little different in terms of pace.
We set out for the Perpignan train station again to set off for the ancient fortress city of Carcassonne. In Dr. Kruger's handy guide book, it said that the city itself is what inspired Walt Disney to create the castle town in his animated classic Sleeping Beauty. I sang this song all day:
I will admit that I was a little skeptical when we first got off the train. I didn't look like much at first, Carcassonne. But as we kept walking passed run down apartment buildings, we finally found the ancient fortress. Ashley made an interesting remark as we crossed the draw bridge into the city, that we always seem to run into special events when ever we go places. On sunday, the city was throwing a biathalon!
We walked into the town and I swear we were at Renaissance Faire. It smelled like beer and happiness. The sun was shining and there were people everywhere, but the atmosphere was so medieval. There were even children sword fighting in an ancient square that harkened to Wesley's fight with Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride. In case you haven't already noted, this weekend was pretty much one out of my favorite fantastical epics.
We ate lunch and toured the ramparts, and enjoyed the sunshine, but ran into a little trouble when we got lost going back to the train station. After some confusing signs, we eventually started running to try to make it on time. Me and Dr. Kruger struggled a bit making our way up and down the treacherous hills, but after exerting ourselves just enough, we made it to the platform with about thirty seconds to spare!
We ate at our last Italian restaurant on sunday and played a game of Essence where we learned that Paisley's essence is best described by that of Toto in The Wizard of Oz. We went to sleep soundly that night.
Half of the group woke up at the crack of dawn and headed home for Tours to make it to their classes on time. Paisley, Keith and I however wanted to stay an extra day so we took this time to go out and do some exploring of our own. Turns out that the city of Perignan has a really cheap tour bus system that takes visitors to the suburbs and the beaches and the mountains for a euro each. How could one just stay in Perpignan with such a great opportunity!?
(Last one I promise)
Since I first discovered that Perpignan was so close to Spain, I thought it would be really cool to add another country to my list and walk to the border. I'm pretty sure that the others thought it would be a cool idea but not very plausible, that is, until Keith and I found the bus that would take us to a town 4 km away from the Spanish frontier! With beaches! So we decided to take the one euro bus and try to make history. We thought that because the town was right on the coast, we could hop in the water and simply swim over the line between the two countries!
Of course it wasn't that simple. We discovered upon arrival that the border was all the way up in the mountains and that we would have to do a bit of walking/climbing to get there. Challenge Accepted.
We started walking along the road that would take us out of the city, and hit a lighthouse. We saw a trail up in the distance, but we decided to follow the highway. We walked along the road and saw some cars, but mainly a great view of the valley below us. We stopped and had a few drinks and eventually came across this really raged looking building that didn't look like it had been occupied for a few years. And that was a correct assumption. Turns it it was the old border control that hasnt been in commission for a few years. But we did it. After a few hours walk, we made it to the Spanish Pyrenees.
We then continued to climb the mountain and summited it.
We had a picnic on this old abandoned tank and noted that the town on the other side of the mountain was the mirror image of the one on the french side....accept louder...with barking dogs.
We eventually climbed back down into france and spent the rest of the day on the rocky shore of the Mediterranean. France really needs to get some beaches with sand...I'm still finding rocks that got lodged into unwanted places.
We met back up with Paisley who toured a farm instead (yeah, silly right?) and then we took the night train back to Tours. We had beds that were really hard and uncomfortable and small. We three were in a compartment with this really old guy with a tattered briefcase (Harry, Ron, Hermione and Pr. Lupin???) and kind of sort of slept. We made it home at 8 am this morning and I slept until 3.
Wow, this was tiring, and now my final bits of homework for the semester await me. This weekend was pure bliss and extremely tiring. Now to get ready for the next chapters of the epic that is turning out to be my semester abroad. In world news: Abdoulaye Wade, the exiting president of Senegal has renounced his presidency, ensuring a peaceful transfer of power. For us, this means a safe travel to Africa at the end of April!
Until next time,
Traveling Quincy
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