Feeling down recently.

Despite the summer finally rolling into beautiful Koblenz, I've been feeling pretty weird recently, not entirely myself and just a little bit down.
I can feel myself trying to find the perfect cliche to describe what's wrong with me recently but I refuse to comply with my brain in that respect. It's all in the mind. It's what you make of it. It's my man-period and I should put down the cake and glass of red, shut up and stop whining.

I even started doing that whole Gillian McKeith 'you are what you eat' rubbish, you know, eating fruit in the morning to counter lethargy and sleepiness, drinking more water to flush all of these mystical and evil toxins out of my body, and even having a nice odd evening with friends where I get drunk and refill all of those toxins to safe levels once again, as a treat to myself. It's all a load of old useless buddhist bullshit if you ask me.

None of it worked. I still feel shitty.

There's a lot of things that I've had on my mind too:

• I hate university, and can't wait to be finished with it. 
• I have work due sometime in the next few weeks, and all I can think of is just going back home, throwing out my fucking ridiculous useless classes and not having to deal with it all until September.
• I really don't want to go back home, but the novelty of living here in Koblenz has now worn off a bit, so i'm kinda in an international state of limbo.
• The creeping thought that I ACTUALLY AM in an international state of limbo. I have no passport so I can't  get home so easily, and I don't technically belong to a country anymore..........scary thought!
• I'm becoming incredibly self concious, I want to be more fit and healthy, and a little bit more muscly too.
• And I'm making plans for an insane trip through the UK walking around 1200 miles from John O'Groats, Scotland to Land's End (which I've always wanted to do) but every day it's seeming less and less possible.

But today I'm saying a huge fuck you to lethargy. I'm not going to have the career I want in the future without a degree, regardless of how shitty, useless and mundane the classes are so I'm just going to have to grin and bear it for the next month or two (plus that extra final year back in Sunderland). I want to get ripped and tanned for the summer too, so i'm hitting the gym and eating enough for three, and finally I'm going to make more plans for the near future and further afield, visiting friends around Germany, and maybe even back to France on the way home.

Maybe those cliches were right. It really is all what you make of it.
Okay cliches, you win this time

I'm a legal alien.

While I haven't been very active on my blog in recent times and haven't been doing a great deal of things apart from relaxing, enjoying my time away from university and not getting up until 3pm to then just go walk on the beach or watch Jersey Shore on MTV, I am still having a hell of a lot of fun in Tarragona.

The question of 'What are you even doing here' has cropped up quite a lot since I moved to Tarragona with my friends Carey and Lauren. Everyone from current Erasmus students, to corner shop owners and random hot men on Grindr asking me 'WHY ARE YOU HERE'.

WHY. JUST WHY.

It's as if Spain isn't a holiday destination or somewhere amazing to relax and lay low for a few months before moving onto a new university, new country and a new lifestyle. Or as if they don't get enough tourists here as it is. What is with that question? Maybe they don't even look at their amazing beaches and seemingly constant good weather in summertime.

By now, if you don't read this blog, or you're just catching up, or you're one of the awesome people i've met in TGN and not had it properly explained to you: I'm on a 2 month break (SPRING BREAK YEAH) in between the two semesters at foreign universities i'm studying at this year, down to some interesting academic year dates in Germany from April - August. This means I get 2 and a bit months of free time to do the hell I want with; some students at my university went back home to go to the grind and save and save and save and be miserable in cloudy, rainy England, but I am here in Spain living with my two friends, in a place and a country that I adore so far.

But on that note I've been here since the end of January and i've just booked trains to move to Germany for semester 2 of my Erasmus year abroad, and yet I am still confronted with that question.....and still considered a tourist. Even if I try and order something in a shop, or a café in my ridiculous broken and fragmented Spanish, I am instantly replied to in English, or French. Maybe I sound a leetle beet like zees now or maybe the Catalonian influx of tourism from France is infinitely greater than the UK. Who knows, but I've got my money on the latter to be honest.


Anyways, i've got my tickets to Germany booked up for the end of the month: i'm taking an overnight train-hotel from Barcelona to Paris, and then onto Köln in the morning where I just have to take a regional train to get to Koblenz all for around 150€, money i've saved up since January.

I honestly will miss this place, Barcelona especially....it has such a liberal feel for a city, mirrored by its friendliness and openness to new, bizarre things. People here seem to have a lot of piercings, tattoos and interesting haircuts, all signs of a place that feels new and fresh. I like that about Spain. People are much friendlier than UK or France, less stylish than both, but at least they're not as arsehole-y as the French about it.

We spent a day up in Barcelona with friend who were visiting from Aix, riding bikes into student riots, into hailstorms and then owering into cosy, warm Irish pubs all the while being freezing cold and wet but absolutely loving the place. Not the first time I've been to Barcelona, but one of the best just because I saw pretty much everything in the space of a few hours -on street level- for once. Also on the way home our train broke down which caused a few tears from the girls, but after looking at the mad situation we'd just been through was cause for a bit of a laugh actually. I loved it, definitely one to tell the grandkids.

Also, finally while I haven't uploaded many photos to this blog to document my travels recently, I do have a lot of interesting ones to share, if not just for myself in the future to look back on. Here's a few interesting ones from Barcelona / Tarragona.

One month later

So its been a month since my last blog post due to a lack of internets over here in my Spanish casa and a whole hell of a lot of stuff has been happening, I moved to Spain, found an apartment with my friends from university and i'm slowly settling into the manic Spanish lifestyle which only stops for 2 hours per day for siesta time.

Tarragona is beautiful and beachy and full of Roman architecture and remains while remaining very modern in parts nonetheless. I really missed being by the coast in Aix and now this is my lovely lovely interim before heading off further more inland to Koblenz in Germany.

Obviously one month of happenings is quite a lot to read about, and quite a lot of effort to type out but i'd like to sum it up just for the sake of documenting my year abroad, if nothing else:

Leaving Aix-en-Provence was hard; moving away from my comfort zone once again and leaving behind all of my newly made friends from around the world was the worst. All I wanted to do was to curl up in someone's 9m2 room in Cuques, watch bad films and maybe go on an expedition to Avignon or something. but in some ways i'm lucky in the fact that I know I have made some amazing friends who I will see very shortly back home, or maybe on a little weekend jaunt to Ireland for a nice cheeky pint down the local!

The journey was interesting. We stopped over in Montpellier on the way to Tarragona, had the most French meal in the most kitschy French restaurant i've ever seen and slept our backpains away in a comfy hotel room after somehow travelling with around three times our weight in luggage.
Unfortunately the French were on strike once again and our train was cancelled and converted into a coach, significantly less awesome, but still it got us from A-B. The girls had a horrendous time, but I was just excited about moving to somewhere bright and fresh.

Me and some friends visited Jerez de la Frontera/Cádiz/Sevilla for a weekend before I'd evven found an apartment with the girls. We saw dancing horse shows and went on tours of brandy cellars in Jerez, milled around local architecture and city sights in Cádiz and I went on a night out with some random Americans I'd stumbled upon. I lost my passport though, and had a bit of a hungover nightmare at a police station and trying to trace my steps, since I had a flight the next day to catch from Sevilla.
I ended up staying in Sevilla for a night in a hostel, skipping my flight and accidentally taking a business class train back to Barcelona for a cheaper price than the rest of the train, which was lovely. Couldn't have had a more bizarre end to the trip to be honest.

We found an apartment in the Old Town of Tarragona, right next to the Cathedral, a Paul bakery and a shop called Ale-Hop ('allez-hop'). It is more French than France itself, and it even has lovely views from my balcony which has been decked out with some gay flowers and some CD's to keep the pigeons away.

We went to Carnival in Salou, and a festival called Cós Blanco, a giant parade through Salou with 25,000 kg of confetti being thrown around by children and drunks alike. It was awesome.

....and in Tarragona too, lots of people dressed up (including me as Princess G, Carey as a hippy and Lauren with a big red wig and some sexy silky red gloves), dancing and singing in the streets. Looking over onto the parade from Doddy's balcony was really fun, as was getting drunk without realising it, going to an Erasmus house party after, the shot bar Chupitos and losing everyone on the way home and waking up with a new bit of furniture to add to my room.

I'm having a load of fun in Tarragona at the minute, and as short as this trip(?) will be for me in comparison to those staying for tyhe entire duration of semester 2, at the end of March I will definitely be able to take a lot away from it, if nothing a slightly better level of Spanish and hopefully Català too!

Stress

I guess I have to apologize a bit to everyone who reads this and knows me in real life, I've been one big stress recently and it's snowballed from nothing into literally everything winding me up:

As well as upping and moving on from a new life that I created here in Aix-en-Provence, with great friends that I'll hopefully keep for years afterwards and great memories above all else, I've got to start to think about what I'm going to be doing with my time in Spain, while trying not to blow all of my money on having too much of a good time.

I have around 3 months to kill essentially, and I want to find a job and get fit at the gym most of all, but I want to learn Spanish too while I'm there.

Not only all of that but little things here have been annoying me, like neighbours being arseholes, not leaving my room for a few days and the university here being ridiculously underorganised as ever, ending in me missing two of my exams, as well as worrying me to death over whether I might have to pay back my Erasmus grant for this semester, since it now seems on paper that I've done absolutely fuck all.

But I'm back on track and feeling good after spending time with some good friends of mine getting fucking drunk and being idiots and catching up. It's very nice to have everyone back in Aix, and it's gonna be so so very hard to leave.

Journey to Catalunya

After finally getting my student loan and having all my mates return to Aix after the Christmas holidays,   we finally got together and booked our trains to Tarragona in Catalunya (Spain).

I'm really excited about getting to Spain and being faced with something different: finding a new life, apartment and potential job in Spain, with the language barrier and the fact that, at the moment, I speak no Spanish at all. It'll be one mad adventure though!

We're travelling there by train, via Montpellier, and staying the night because of a lack of a connecting train. Good excuse to have a look around Montpellier, which is fashioned as a very friendly, good-looking and very gay-friendly Mediterranean city in France. I originally wanted to go to Montpellier for my year abroad, but our university didn't have any specific Erasmus relations with their universities.

So there you go, one week and a bit left until I move to Spain!

Mont St Victoire, and doing life on the cheap.

Without wanting to dwell on my financial situation too much, it has to be said I'm doing alright without money in my life whatsoever. I am now down to my last euro almost, which will be strategically spent on long life tasty French pain de mie.....or toast bread if you don't want to be so fancy about it, but I am still not really that worried.
I've been out every day, and almost every night at parties organised by others, which have often involved a little spread of food and a bottle of wine lurking around. Not to say the free finger buffets are the only reason I've been going out, but they certainly help! I'm loving being frugal and still being able to have a really good time.

A few nights ago there was an international Erasmus 'soirée' speech thing, which involved us Erasmus students having certain future plans regaled and unveiled about the halls and dorms for future Erasmus  years to us (which in my opinion was quite irrelevant because...err....we won't be here?!).
Anyways in celebration of -something I can't quite remember- there was a high-quality international buffet of food. There was japanese sushi, Indian food with lots of spices and humous, Italian style ciabattas as well as tapenade (a local Marseillaise speciality) and vol-au-vents and stuff like that.

It was beautiful.

These were lovely: Sundried pepper and tomato in
a very sour cream.

Sushi, some coconut marzipan balls and dried ginger 

Undoubtedly a very fake Italian chef

Another little party like this one was Katy's 21st surprise birthday party which a few of us organised. Some of the girls I'm here in Aix with booked out a room in the student halls buildings to host a nice bit of a do for her. We led her in blindfolded, thinking that she was coming to see me and see something i'd wanted to surprise her with personally, but in reality she walked in on the entire group of friends here. She nearly broke down in tears she was so shocked!

We made her an book with pictures of us in and holiday photos that we'd all taken together and that made her cry even more. Then we got drunk. Very very drunk.

All my sexy boys and girls from Aix-en-Provence for Katy's 21st. Katy's the one being lifted up on the top left, and that's me looking like a Japanese tourist on the left with the green jeans.

So eventually, coming to the crux and the point of this blogpost (.....me rattling off a load of text about what i've done the previous week happens way to much on this blog), this Sunday a few friends are going up camping on Mont St Victoire, a local massif which looks gloriously over Aix-en-Provence. It's quite famous actually, Van Gogh used to paint provençal lavender fields with St Victoire in the background, and most of the famous painter Cézanne's work was based on, or around, St Victoire.

There is a small pilgrimage rest-stop inside a church at the top of the mountain which we're going to camp inside of, as well as a giant cliffside where we can make a campfire. It's gonna be awesome. I can't wait to see what all the fuss is about, and hopefully I won't be killed by rabid mountain animals or stranded and hungry cannibalistic tourists!

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.

I couldn't think of a good title

I really don't have much to write for this post, a little bit like the last one I made, but i thought i'd upload some pretty pictures of things for your viewing pleasure. I've not been very good at taking photos of Aix recently (unlike Marseille/Sanary/Le Lavandou etc etc) since i've mostly been getting my bearings right and making sure i actually 'see' most of the town as opposed to doing the whole touristy thing too much. But there's a few anyways

Anyways, it was the Erasmus 'Flag on your Face' party a few nights ago and the first real outing with the Erasmus students as opposed to the group of French friends i've made. It was okay, it was really weird to see just how many people there are here in Aix just in this one bar from all four corners of the globe, and the bar was packed but I had a fun night with the girls from uni at home and some other English/Australian girls too. 

 We may have absolutely taken over the streets next to the Wohoo bar

Obviously I don't have to try to be sexy after two bottles of wine.

Being tourists on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix. That's Carey btw, she has a blog too.

We saw this procession of traditionally dressed people walking through Aix, but we still have no idea why. Anyone can explain? It was September 2nd 2012.

Me and my first baguette. It was love at first sight. And she was cheap.

Aix-en-Provence

Aix is lovely, quite a mid-sized city with enough to see for months and months ahead but not as intimidating as Marseille; although that being said I really haven't seen too much of Aix itself yet, but more of the student residences and some of the shopping areas. It seems perfectly lovely from here.

I'm living in Cuques halls in Aix en Provence, which is just on the south side of Aix and it's been nice so far. My room is pretty basic and relatively small, although I do have my own fridge, corner washroom with a sink and....a bidet. So continental. I've read loads of blogs about Cuques and how manky it is: It really does depend what sort of room you get, there are renovated studio apartments or single bed rooms with shared facilities. Sharing toilets, showers and the kitchen isn't ideal by any means but I think after a while anyone would get used to it

In all fairness, I wouldn't care how trashed or fucking run-into-the-ground the place was, it costs 155€/month, which for Aix is probably the cheapest you will ever find a room. That works out to be around £120, which then translates to around £30 a week. That's fucking cheap. And that's without the CAF government subsidising/benefits for students and those without an income.
I honestly challenge you to find somewhere in Provence that costs so little, but is in such a beautiful city......most T1 studio apartments here start from 400€ bare minimum and then they were just as shabby as halls can be.

I've been meeting a hell of a lot of really nice people from here too, and in fact the first night I was here I was invited straight out to 'la colline': the little hill next to halls to drink and get brutally fucked up with pastis. I didn't have any energy after travelling from Sanary, via Marseille and via getting lost in Aix with a bag of fucking everything with me, but it was an awesome night. We ended up getting 'forcibly removed' for creating too much noise so we went to someone's apartment and danced to Call Me Maybe all night long. I still cannot for the life of me even remember whose apartment that was. I was ofc enormously drunk....

I'm finding it quite hard to understand everything in a conversation, but that's mostly down to the speed and my lack of vocabulary. I've been taking in quite a lot of the local patois provençal and really familiar language which we were never taught at school: dégun, tarpin, dégueulasse etc etc. By the end of the year I am determined to sound like a local and not like some dodgy Englishman who has just taken up French or so.

Anyways, I haven't taken any photos of Aix and stuff yet because i've been too busy, but I'm gonna go on a long wander of the town soon enough and hopefully see as much of the beautiful provençal city as  possible.

France is only 500-ish miles away (so, why does it feel like a million miles away?)

If that image doesn't grab your attention, then i'm not sure what will......

All will be explained further throughout the post :P

Okay, so i've been working on my application to both universities recently, and been feeling prettttty good about it all. I'm really really excited to go away, can't wait to go to be honest!

Emma from the International Office at Sunderland Uni has been infinitely more helpful that my actual lecturers / year abroad supervisors, who i'm not going to name or talk about in too bad of a light anymore (since I am a changed, more positive, individual :D)

I've chosen my modules for Provence, i'm taking French grammar, German grammar, Cinema (some sort of 'Cinema through the ages' module) and Erasmus Translation. Don't have my application to hand so I don't know for certain that these are the modules though.

For Koblenz (which is primarily a teacher training university) I'm still undecided. I found their website really unhelpful and ridiculous to navigate, same with Université de Provence, but on a greater scale.
It's all good practice though....(actually reading the website text helps a lot!!!!)....as i've learned quite a lot about the French education system, certain acronyms and what the word for 'module catalogue' is (une plaquette)

For anyone next year who may be looking at this for help in choosing modules for Université de Provence, the place to go to find out module details is here and look for la plaquette when selecting a module, to find dates and times and course codes and all the rest of the boring stuff......

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The photo, by the way was taken by a friend on his year abroad in Darmstadt, Germany. He went to a gay club in Frankfurt, and was absolutely astonished to see how different it is to English 'club etiquette' (not sure if oxymoron :P). This guy was just walking around completely bollock naked, pun most definitely intended, without a care in the world. Quite refreshing really....if not a bit creeepy :P

I'll be reporting back on here with the quality of the nightlife, I am determined to go to uni over on the continent but i'm finding a second home in the form of a nice drinking establishment over there! I think i'll miss my local pubs and bar-banter. Hopefully the Germans will teach me something about beer, and the French, wine ;)

I decided to write a blog.

I tried this once and failed dramatically at it. Hopefully this time won't be as disastrous.

This is me. My name is Gareth Hunter.

I am currently a BA French & German Student at Sunderland University.

I'm 21 and i'm about to embark a great, scary, terrifying adventure which will (hopefully) change my life, I'm about to go on my year abroad, as part of my languages degree. I thought that documenting the year abroad would be a great thing to keep for myself, as well for others to look at in the future to see how much of a struggle it can be, but also what an exciting experience this will be.

As of August/September I am living in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France for 6 months, and then in Koblenz in the Rhineland area of Germany 6 months after that.

To say i'm shitting bricks would be an understatement.



View Larger Map

I had to make a smaller map because Aix-en-Provence was so far off the map if Newcastle was to be shown too!

The really worrying this is that I have nothing sorted yet - through my own fault and seemingly all of the universities faults. Not only does the Université de Provence's website not show or document student accommodation, but it also gives no help into finding local accommodation.

Pretty much same with the Universität Koblenz-Landau; it shows only photos of the campuses and photos of the university library. 

I don't think i'll be living in the uni library to be honest.

I've lived away from home quite a bit since I was 18 (moving to Birmingham for a year, and instead spending a large part of it with my ex-boyfriend in Northern Germany, then living with friends in Newcastle instead of staying at home with my parents) so it's not such a major step for me; that major step is the language barrier and will be either my greatest achievement or my downfall.