Language students, fluency and not yet being German.

Language students are an odd bunch. We learn (for the most part) a foreign language in our home country, where we are told to immerse ourselves fully into the language and our studies (heh?); we express ourselves in different ways to everone else, for example by saying some words that sound exotic in a different language or screaming 'putain' whenever something goes wrong since no-one understands it. and thinking of ourselves as groundbreaking for listening to some exotic French reggeaton from the suburbs of Marseille.

Maybe all of that is just me, but I have noticed that a whole hell of a lot of people seem to act the same way.
Drawing Union Flags on their pencil cases, and telling others that the Beatles are 'obviously the best band of the British scene' because John Lennon had lovely hair and that Strawberry Fields really should be Forever. Anglophilia is actually pretty huge outside of England.
We're a flag waving nation, but bugger me, in 21 years I've never seen so many Union Flags as I've seen in just under a year here on the continent.

It is in this way that I was totally blind before I came out here to France, and to Spain, and to Germany. I had no idea what was happening behind the Channel if I'm quite honest. We'd wrote presentations and god knows how many ridiculous essays about political parties and regionalism, but I feel like I've learned a lot.

It's a bit fucking cliché to say that the Erasmus programme has opened my eyes, but it really has opened my eyes to the world.

I thought my German had been 'alright' for years until I was told a few days ago by a German friend that 'one year ago I couldn't understand you, Gareth...but now, it's definitely better' and that it was 'weird for him' to hear me 'speaking German for once'.

I'm not sure whether that last quotation was accidentally mean, or that I'm now speaking proper German, but either way it's a good kick up the arse to get myself motivated and actually sit down and do some revision instead of hoping to obtain this lifelong skill through osmosis. It doesn't work like that. I tried that in Spain, to a crowd of Catalonians I met in Tarragona all saying ¿Que? and most likely not understanding any of my severly broken Spanish. I daren't even mention my Catalan, which wasn't any better.



I have a hell of lot of stories to write about rom the last two months, in which I've not been motivated to write, nor to take so many photos. probably down to the fact that I feel very much at home here in Koblenz. I've always been best on the ball when I'm inbetween feeling at home and feeling totally alienated.
Anyways, I'll be tring to make more of an effort with this blog. I have a few months left in Germany, have met some new amazing people, caught up with old amazing friends of mine by god I am making the most of it, if it kills me in the process.

What the French do best...

I've just found out that there is to be an SNCF [train company] strike in France (as well as Air France) on the day that I have to take the train from Marseille to Montpellier to get back to England, so i'm seemingly fucked. As much as I complain about Ryanair being the crème de la shit of air travel, I would rather like to take my flight on the 25th thank you very much.....

Now the biggest problem is that it really isn't that far to Montpellier from around here, but I don't think there are any buses that go directly there, so my only reasonable way of getting there is by train. That and i've already booked my train tickets in advance to take advantage of the cheaper prices. So yes. Thanks France!

It is my opinion that the national hobby of France is to find as many legal ways of not working as possible throughout the year......and they couldn't have stumbled upon a better time. It's Toussaint holiday at the end of October (spanning through to the beginning of November) and most schools/universities will be out for 'half-term' because of this.

Now the clever part:

Most schools/unis will end classes Friday 26th until around Monday 5th November, giving just over 10 days with weekends of holiday, some schools may give an extra week.

But the strikers are planning to cut services completely from the Wednesday 24th- Friday 26th October, effectively only giving them two working days through that week. If you're a train driver and you don't have to work [solid] hours through the weekend then you're absolutely laughing.

You've got to hand it to them, if there's one thing they know how to do well, it's to create carnage through deprivation of public services!


It could be cynical to say that the French don't like working, but rather enjoy pleasure, or it could be true. Who knows. Given the choice between sunbathing in my back garden with a mojito and working a long, arduous shift on the trains I know which I'd choose......

Croatia

Without getting too deep and spiritual, venturing into the unknown can be one of the most enriching experiences of your life. Until now I'd never been to Eastern Europe (and never understood the hype) and now I can totally check that off my bucket list...

Croatia really was amazing, I can't stress that enough, and i've probably already stressed that enough to the people who didn't come for the weekend. We've been quite annoying like "omgzzzz getting the Croatia blues guys!" so apologies. We just loved it.

As I said in my previous blog (which you should probably read first if you haven't already) we stayed in a hostel called the Drunken Monkey in Zadar which was just outside of the Old Town. What a great hostel that was, such a good atmosphere....

(some of these photos have been lovingly stolen from the Drunken Monkey hostel website and Facebook etc)

I was a sleepy bastard on the plane there. I hadn't slept in 2 days before getting to Zadar (night before because we woke up at 3am and I am shit at waking up nevermind at 3am...)

On the piss in Zadar

Zadar Old Town....the most interesting architecture and all that.

Krka National Park, Croatia.....so many waterfalls round here and excellent swimming!

Me and some of the girls chilling by the waterfalls

Bustling streets in Zadar

Ice cream is like a national hobby in Croatia. Who knew.

That's me (on the right) jumping into the Adriatic Sea

Finally a nice photo of me.....at dinner in a restaurant called La Bruschetta.  I had octopus salad and ravioli with truffle sauce. And a carafe of wine. haha sooo good.

Me and Mano went climbing the ancient walls which were round by the port. They're effectively defences against foreign troops and we scaled them, like badasses.

More beautiful waterfalls

The Gentlemen!!!

In Zadar beer is cheaper than water, grapes and chewing gum. I have never known a holiday to be so bizarre. Trying to wade through the mystery of the currency was the hardest bit. A pizza for 40 kuna is actually only 5€ and taking 500 kuna out of the ATM works out to be £55...so confusing.


But a great time was had. We visited Krka National Park and we even rented out minivans to get there. Clément our French friend actually dived off the top of the waterfalls, which was super scary but fucking awesome.
We experienced Croatian techno bars, amazing night dancing with pole dancers and dancing like madmen with crazy weirdo Croatian men.
Walking around the Old Town we also found the Sea Organ. The sea organ is exactly what it says on the tin; it's an organ which is played by the movement of the water beneath it....and it's extremely bizarre to listen to, but it's so relaxing at the same time.

We went skinny dipping after a drunken night too which was hilarious, and the water was freezing, so running back to the hotel wearing wet clothes and being too naked with friends is definitely something you should try but maybe not on a cold night.

Across the Adriatic.

Tomorrow a lot of us cool folk from Aix-en-Provence are taking a holiday (within a holiday) to Croatia for a very long weekend in Eastern Europe.
I've always wanted to go to Croatia and in fact had plans to go a few years ago with my best friends back in Newcastle. We were going to fly to Paris, Interrail from Paris through France, Germany, Austria and Slovakia then arrive in Croatia and go to a dance/electro festival called Hideout Festival.
Here you can see the quiet little affair down below.

But our plans were cut short because my best friend spent all of her student loan on champagne, casino and fried chicken and Ilhan's Special pizzas (which are the best in Newcastle to be fair brrahhh). It would have been awesome, but I plan on going sometime in  the next few years anyways. Hopefully after I graduate I won't be stuck in such a career rut that I can't just casually jet off to something like that (and/or continue with all my travel plans), like so many people I know...

So I was extremely excited to have the opportunity to do it right now!

We're flying with Ryanair from Marseille to Zadar tomorrow early morning (5th Oct - 6am) with pretty cheap flights. Obviously Ryanair is a massive shit sometimes, but i'm hoping that the plane won't just stop mid-air or something. I'd quite like to live a bit longer thanks Mr Ryan.

Zadar is apparently a lovely city, lots of old architecture and awesome stuff, but i'm just gonna in with a totally open-mind and report back with what I thought. I've never been to Eastern Europe before so the language barrier will be difficult but hopefully I can pick up a few words for 'beer', 'tequila' and 'hangover'!

Either way, I now have my passport back after finally paying my rent and a suitcase nicked from my Frenchman so i'm all ready to go! Hopefully I will wake up early enough tomorrow morning so that I don't miss our bus and then miss the flight and then miss the entire holiday....

By the way, final note: If anyone wants to know which hostel we'll be staying at, it's The Drunken Monkey Hostel in Zadar. Amazing name and it's looks great from what we've seen online. It's 92% rated on Hostelworld so I have high expectations that it's gonna be a chilled out place to crash.
There's a few photos down below which i've stolen from the website!

I'm so fucking excited.

La rentrée

So I finally made it to the Université d'Aix-Marseille in France, and after one month of no work, no studies and no major responsibilities i'm back to the grind. Sort of. You should see my timetable....most of my lectures / seminars are in the afternoon and i've specifically dropped modules which start at 9am AND don't sound toooo interesting either .It's all for the greater good. If I wake up too early i'm moody and unhappy, and therefore I'd be unhappy for the rest of the day: If I wake up later and go to the modules I have in the afternoon already, i'm more likely to do better in them, and enjoy them more if I drop the shit ones early on in the morning!

Method in the madness.....

I really didn't realise how different university here is to the UK until this week: the workload is already a lot bigger, the lectures are true lectures with minds full of historical dates and names of kings and writers and penseurs to soak up somehow, lecturers sometimes turn up late with no apologies, students turn up late and apologise profusely, the building is covered with political graffiti and 'down-with-capitalism' posters (French students seem enormously more politically active than back at home which is great), and French students seem very work-orientated rather than pissing around in class chucking paper balls at each other like in kindergarten. Serious studies happen here, and for someone who has come from universities where students regularly take the piss and waste the lecturers time, that's quite a refreshing thing actually...

Also, i've realised that admin is absolutely capital in these parts. For my Traduction class, I need written confirmation from my tutor at my home university to verify that it is course-related and I have the sufficient language level to participate, despite having already discussed and planned which modules to take with my home lecturers. I can't enrol for the class until I have that and the class starts soon so it's a big mess of paperwork and trying to wrestle my lecturers into action, which is tougher than it might sound. Fucking academics.

I have une fiche pédagogigue which has to be taken to every exam , un certificate de scolarité which has to be guarded 24/7 and never lost on pain of certain death, une fiche d'évaluation which to be honest I still don't know what to do with, as well as all my other Erasmus shite to wade through; arrival forms, exit forms, grant forms, learning agreement, changes to the learning agreement forms, changes to the changes form etc etc.....

It's going well though, and it's only my first week/few days back so I have plenty of time to make a tit out of myself as usual by getting lost or walking in the wrong class (which seems to be my speciality).
But I like it here. I'm looking forward to my courses, although i'm sure this blog will be the only thing keeping me sane with the immense workload we have ahead of us!

I'm pretty sure the Erasmus programme was made just so that natives can laugh at foreign people getting lost or making twats out of themselves.

Since i've been here i've made quite a few gaffes. Most of them are down to the good old combination of alcohol/social ignorance/my bad humour........ and although it's alright with friends from home who probably already know that when you've had a few too many you end up talking utter shit (and that's fine), it's so much different in a foreign country with a foreign language holding you back too.

I very frequently make a twat out of myself in social situations and so far I think i've insulted almost every nationality that i've come across so far in some manner or way:

• I was describing the Marianne [national emblem of France] and her flowing hair that I saw on a coin here, but I apparently I made her sound like a total diva and that annoyed some people. 
• Compared some American girls to guidettes from Jersey Shore because of duckfaces. That didn't go down so well
• Made a joke (which to be fair was taken hilariously) about the Troubles as well as the wars between England and Ireland as being 'back in the good old days'. Obviously sarcastically. In context it was funny....
• Talked about Swedish people looking like mannequins with perfect skin and perfect hair.
• OBVIOUSLY there were jokes about the Germans a bit. I'm British after all.
• And finally jokes about French guys being so sleazy...to relatively skeezy French guys.

I think the problem is that i'm overly confident just going up to people and talking to them normally (especially in English) and -obviously- friend humour is different to random stranger humour.

I realised that after sitting in the park with a few friends from uni and others a few times, making lewd jokes or having a bit of a laugh with each other to the point of calling each other names and making comments about things you really wouldn't normally: The faces of the people who weren't in our 'uni friends group' were just priceless. So shocked! Is that because we're generally vulgar though?

Personally i'd like to find out more about 'typically French humour'. We have really deadpan/black humour in England and we know it, but i've not really encountered much obvious humor here to be honest. Stand-up on TV really isn't any good an the bare bones of humor in conversations that I can actually understand between French people here just often doesn't make too much sense to me.

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On the other hand, laughing at tourists is the universal language of comedy I think. Why are tourists so obviously touristy allll the time? And why do they always wear hiking boots everywhere....even in 50 degree Provence? I would like to think of myself as never being 'touristy' to the point of this. I still get lost, look lost and go to museums, and I went to the Eiffel Tower to take photos. But I did all that without wearing ridiculous caps and hiking boots.

For anyone coming to Aix, you will eventually realise that there are a lot of tourists. And for the right reasons too, it's a glorious city, very Provençal with a modern touch. This unfortunately drives up prices in some places around the city centre, but after a while it's easy to learn which places aren't catered for people with hiking boots. I promise.

If anyone doesn't know the Marianne, she's the one holding the flag (and leading the fight): Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix.