Ten months in Tours: October 2013

Thursday, 31 October 2013

Vacances de la Toussaint Part 1: Bourges and Le Grand Malleray

I'm half way through my first semester here! There are no classes this week as it's the 'Vacances de la Toussaint', so I've taken the opportunity to get out of Tours for a bit. The academic year is much longer here than at home so it's nice having this time off to break it up a little.

My french marraine Pauline very kindly invited me to stay with her and her family for a few days during the holidays, so we set off together from Tours on Friday evening and I stayed until Monday morning when I got the train directly to Paris. She lives in a tiny village close to Bourges, called 'Le Grand Malleray', which is very rural and pretty. Her family were really friendly and welcoming, and put up with my sub-standard french. It was great to spend some time in exclusively french company and I got to meet her grandpa and great aunt as well, which was nice. On the Saturday we went into Bourges and met up with Rhianna and Justine (Pauline's roommate, who is also from the Bourges area and has unofficially adopted Rhianna), and explored the town a little and went to the Cathedral. Bourges Cathedral is truly spectacular, even better than St. Gatien's in Tours! We were also able to climb the never-ending spiral staircase up to the roof to see Bourges from above.

On Sunday it rained almost all day so it was a quiet one, but it was lovely to relax. The house was pleasingly french and Pauline's mum had cooked us 'coq au vin' with frites for lunch, which was delicious! I was very well fed over the weekend, and got to try several typically french foods, such as the sugared almonds that are traditionally given out at baptisms (her parents had been to a wedding and baptism on Saturday), as well as drink freshly pressed apple juice. We watched two french films over the weekend, 'Intouchables' and 'Le coeur des hommes', and on Sunday evening The Order of the Phoenix was on TV so we watched that in french. I understood most of the first two films but funnily enough I understood the Harry Potter word for word! It's always funny hearing some of the name changes though (e.g. 'Poudlard' for Hogwarts and the french pronunciation of Hermione and Dumbledore)

Here are some photos of the weekend, Paris post to follow!

Bourges Cathedral (Cathédrale St-Étienne de Bourges)

Bourges Cathedral

View of the Mairie from top of cathedral

View from top of the cathedral

Bourges Cathedral

Bourges Cathedral (doorway to the never-ending spiral staircase)

Me and Rhianna on top of the Cathedral

Pauline and Justine on top of the Cathedral

Bourges- a less casual statue (Jacques Coeur)

Bourges- a very casual statue

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

Amboise: Katie and Jamie come to visit!

It's been an incredibly busy week and a bit, but mostly for good reasons! I've noticed a strange pattern that if I have a bad Monday the week normally turns out pretty well, but if I have a good Monday the week drags on and on and is exhausting. Clearly I need to plan hideously unpleasant Mondays and then the rest of the week would be always be amazing! I could just try and go into each day with low/no expectations but that's hard to do with the cumulative tiredness.

On Friday me and Rhianna went for dinner at Pauline (my marraine) and Justine's flat and it was such a nice end to the week. They made us tartiflette which was delicious and also my first oven cooked meal for a long time! (my 'kitchen' here is 4 hot plates and 2 microwaves between 22 people) We were really pampered, there were snacks and drinks and a homemade dessert, it was heaven. We watched a really strange programme with puppets, a bit like Spitting Image, although we couldn't understand any of it, and then compared Harry Potter characters in the French and English versions of the film.

Then on Saturday my Auntie Katie and cousin Jamie arrived for their visit, which I've been looking forward to for weeks. On Saturday we just caught up and went to Place Plumereau for crêpes/galettes. Then on Sunday we went to Amboise which is a lovely town about 20 minutes away from Tours by train. We went to Château d'Amboise, which is really striking, with it's high walls and being set right on the river. The grounds were really nice too although unfortunately the weather suddenly turned to thunder and torrential rain shortly after we'd finished looking inside the castle so we didn't get to look all the way around. We walked down into the town (on steps that had essentially turned into a waterfall), and bought drinks and eclairs while the rain calmed down, and then had a wander round the town. I think I'll try and return there at some point this year, as it was a lovely town and there's actually another smaller château in Amboise which I haven't seen yet called Château du Clos Lucé, and a museum about Leonardo da Vinci.

On Monday we spent the morning looking round the Cathedral and then me and Jamie went for a walk whilst Katie went to the Musée des Beaux-Arts and then we all met back up for a trip to the famous 'Flunch'. In the afternoon we did a bit of shopping and then in the evening we had crêpes again. Tuesday I had lectures 2-6 so Katie and Jamie came to see my halls in the morning and we had lunch here, and then walked down into town together. In the evening we went out for crêpes for the third time, I think I've probably had my quota of crêpes for this term now, but I'm going to ignore that! It was really nice having them to visit :)

This morning I had my first exam, it was 4 hours long and for Ancient History. Thinking about how well I might've done I think that my french has really improved and actually it was good considering that it's in a foreign language. Unfortunately I'm virtually certain that I've failed, I'm not quite sure how I'm meant to reach third year native speaker level, and the fact that they don't seem to set coursework means I can't avoid my language related mistakes and can't be sure that I've understood the text that we were set correctly. The french essay writing style is also completely different to ours, it's so alien to me, and I highly doubt that I mastered it first time.

All in all I am extremely ready for the week off, I can't quite believe this is only half way through term. I can't wait to see Bourges and Paris, but I also can't wait to sleep!

Amboise

Amboise- Chapelle de Saint-Hubert

Amboise- grave of Leonardo Da Vinci in Chapelle de Saint-Hubert

Amboise- Chapelle de Saint-Hubert

Amboise

Amboise (fireplace in use!)

Amboise

Tours- Cathedral from the Musée des Beaux-Arts

Katie reading about the enormous tree outside the Musée des Beaux-Arts

Tours- me and Jamie's walk (new flowers on Rue des Tanneurs)

Tours- me and Jamie's walk

Sunday, 13 October 2013

Château de Saché et Château de Candé

The last week hasn't been particularly eventful, except for Thursday night which accidentally turned into getting home at 5am. Tours doesn't have lots of clubs considering it's size, which in general suits me fine as the bars are enough for me. It was nice as a change though, and to actually behave like a student in my old age.

This Saturday I went on a coach trip organised by the uni's international office with Rhianna and Chloe. The title 'Château' is slightly misleading, especially in the case of Château de Saché, as they were more like stately homes, but they were lovely old buildings and we were given guided tours of both. It was a really great opportunity as the trip only cost 5 euros for the whole day, and both sites would be difficult to reach without a car normally.

Château de Saché was converted from an old castle and is of particular interest as it was owned by a friend of the famous french writer Honoré de Balzac (born in Tours!) and Balzac spent long periods staying there and writing. I sort of wished I'd read some Balzac, or known anything about his life beforehand, but it was still really interesting to hear about his work methods (he would often work from 5am to 5pm) and his life.

Château de Saché

Balzac's writing desk

Château de Candé was definitely the more impressive building and had a slightly more château-y look to it. It'd been developed and changed at various points which gave it that nice slightly higgledy-piggledy look as the new owners didn't really seem to pay attention to the original style when they changed it! While the first group were having their tour we went for a walk around the autumny grounds, and then we were given our tour. It was very luxurious inside, they were clearly very wealthy and innovative as there was an early gym, early indoor bathrooms and heating systems, an amazing library, and lovely french ceilings. Château de Candé was actually where Wallis Simpson and Edward finally married each other, and their signatures can still be found on the wall in the library.

Château de Candé

Château de Candé (grounds)

Wallis Simpson's wedding dress

(Thank you again to Rhianna, whose pictures I stole. She has 1000 times more energy than I do)
The full length of this term is starting to hit me, but luckily I have a lot to look forward to. Next week my aunt Katie and cousin are coming out to visit me, I'm meeting up soon with a rhul languages friend also staying in the Loire Valley, and then plans are starting to come together for the Vacances de la Toussaint for possible trips to Paris and Bourges.

Monday, 7 October 2013

Chenonceau

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I didn't do anything very exciting last week and quite a lot of last week was taken up with stressing/catching up on sleep before and after my first presentation of the year. Luckily Lucy and I were allowed to work together which meant we only had to speak for about 10 minutes each (in my contemporary history class it'll be 20-25 minutes by myself!). We met up and worked out a plan and it was all going quite well until we emailed it to our lecturer to ask his opinion, only for him to reply basically telling us to change all of it. So that added extra stress, on top of our nerves about having to speak for 20 minutes in front of all these native speakers.

It's difficult to tell how it went, I stumbled over my words a bit but I think he liked our revised plan, and I was mainly just glad it was over. French lecturers give instant feedback in front of the whole class, which is completely alien to British students, particularly as they are often very harsh with their criticism of people's work. However luckily he went easy on us and wasn't too mean. So overall it was a hideous experience, but I guess also a successful one, as we learnt about french presentation structure, managed not to humiliate ourselves, and I noticed some people taking notes while we were talking so we obviously made some sense.

On Sunday my marraine Pauline invited me and Rhianna to go to Chenonceau with her roommate and her friend. It was absolutely beautiful and perfect weather for it! The castle is very striking, it cuts across the River Cher and has enormous and very well maintained gardens. The castle has an interesting history, it was largely built up and expanded by various influential women, including Diane de Poitiers who was renowned for her beauty but also made a lot of significant architectural changes and increased the yield to three times more than it had been before. During the first world war a military hospital was set up at the castle and in the second world war the castle grounds were used to smuggle people across the demarcation line.

After we looked around the castle we had lunch in the gardens and then looked around the horticultural section of the gardens where they were growing all sorts! Because it was a Sunday there weren't any trains back until a bit later so we went for a wander around Chenonceau itself, which is tiny but very picturesque and idyllic. It was a lovely day and it was nice to speak some french in a more relaxed setting.