CSI:Paris

When I awoke this morning, I walked over to my window and, as usual, opened my blinds to gaze upon beautiful Paris. Much to my surprise, the area of street below had been sectioned off and was surrounded by a bunch of police officers. After talking to my host family, I learned that there had been a shooting earlier that morning. It seems that a pedestrian walked up to a car and shot all three people in the car. (I had not been woken because apparently a silencer had been used.) I heard that one person had been killed and that the other two were in critical condition. Hopefully they have the French version of Gil Grissom working the case. Above are a couple of photos I snapped.

Stockholm

Now that it's been a week since I got back from Stockholm, I figured it was time for a blog post. Between the work that I should be doing and continuing to discover Paris, it's been hard to find time to blog.

But anyway, Stockholm was pretty marvelous. It's an incredibly beautiful city made up of a bunch of islands connected by a ton of bridges. Chris, my travel partner, and I were able to mooch off of a friend-of-a-friend and stayed for free in an apartment just outside the city. We would take the subway, called the Tunnelbana, each morning into the city proper where we would spend most of our time walking around Gamla Stan (the old town island) and Sodermalm, the young, artsy area. We made frequent stops to Fika, a word that a Swede told us meant "coffee with a little more." When we asked what "a little more" meant, she said that it included "eating pastries and socializing with friends." Chris and I were quite impressed that the Swedes have a four letter word that expresses so much, and thus spent a good portion of our trip honoring this Swedish past time.

We also visited several museums, including the modern art museum and the national gallery, both of which I liked a lot. Another highlight included going to a bar one night and being pleasantly surprised to find a post-party for a Swedish hip-hop festival. (This was strange because apparently the festival had taken place several months ago.) Anyway, some of the rappers were pretty good. (The Swede's speak English so well they can even rap in it.) I wasn't as impressed, however, by the guy who put on a ski-mask and started screaming "Mosh." But to each his own, I suppose.

But perhaps the best part was just listening to people speak Swedish—very entertaining. In conclusion, I was very taken with Stockholm and definitely recommend it to anyone traveling through Europe.

(pictures below)

(I think this was at 4. Night comes early in Sweden in the winter.)

(Sodermalm)

(Pretty park right next to a big, beautiful library.)

(modern art museum)

(Kunnebulle (sp?)—Swedish cinnamon roll. really tasty.)

(Café we went to 4 days in a row to Fika. also, home of the cinnamon roll seen above.)

(island of Skeppsholmen.)

(just something that I thought was funny.)

Marseille

As mentioned, I went to Marseille two weekends ago with my friends from the program Chris and Ryan. We took the TGV—the high speed train of which the French are very proud—down Friday and returned on Monday afternoon. Our hostel, called London Connection despite the fact that the owners were definitely not from Britain, was not exactly the Ritz-Carlton. In fact, it might have actually been the crappiest hostel I've ever stayed in. It's possible that the owners, who slept in the same room as us, might have illegally turned a two or three person apartment into a 25-person hostel. (Luckily, however, the internet reviews that said the hostel was infested with bed bugs proved untrue.) We did not spend much time at the hostel.

The weather was absolutely beautiful—about 70 degrees and sunny—and thus we spent a ton of time walking around and sitting at café terraces. Despite a phenomenal location, Marseille isn't as touristy as you'd think. It's actually pretty gritty and dirty. The city also seems really diverse, which was cool. (One of my friend's host mom warned us that the Arabs could "descend" at any time. This never seemed to be a problem.)

One day we took a 30-minute bus to nearby Aix-en-Provence, where we spent a lovely afternoon and evening walking around with another friend from the program who has an apartment there.

Below are some pictures from the trip:

An old guy cuttin' up some fish.

A French stereotype

Marseille as seen from the Old Port—it's the oldest port in Europe, in fact—with Notre Dame de la Garde on top of the big hill.

View from Notre Dame de la Garde.

Our lovely hostel—this plaque was our only indication as to where it was. Enlarge this image to see how sketchy our hostel was.

A view from our boat tour.

A calanque, or small-rocky-island-thing, off the coast.

My two travel buddies walking dramatically into the sunset. The arch is a WWI memorial.

Notre Dame de la Garde—a really colorful and, I thought, beautiful church perched atop a big hill overlooking Marseille.