Au revoir, l'Angleterre

Today is my last day in England, and I'm waiting in the train station in York.  I had to check out of my guest house at 10:00, but my train doesn't leave until 2:15, so I wandered my way to the train station, made it here a little before 11:00, and I decided to just plop down and wait it out.  I've got a tiny bit of a  sore throat, and it's a little drizzly out, and my suitcase is pretty huge, so I'm just gonna sit and waste some time on my computer.

Really, I would probably do well to get some reading done, but I just want a day or so off from thinking about speech processing.  The conference was really, really great, and my talk went over pretty well!  I said at the very beginning, "This is my first conference talk ever, so please be kind."  And that got a laugh out of the audience, and then people were very, very kind.  It's pretty fun to get a laugh out of a room full of people too!  Then once I got started, I wasn't nervous at all.  It was very weird, actually.  I started to freak out a little on Friday night, when I was still fixing up some of my slides.  I could feel my heart beating and I was really, physically anxious thinking about giving my talk.  I decided to go for a brisk walk and get some dinner in town, and working out some of my nervous energy helped.  Then by the time I got up at the podium on Saturday morning, I was feeling strangely relaxed.  There were lots of questions and comments at the end, which is always a good sign, and multiple people came up to me throughout the rest of the day and said, "I really enjoyed your talk" and then had some comments and suggestions.  So I would definitely call the whole conference a success, and I would even call my first talk a success and a good experience, and it feels really good to be done and to have my first one out of the way.  Whew!

The conference ended around noon yesterday (Saturday), and then there was an excursion to Fountains Abbey, about an hour's drive west of York.  We got a guided tour of the abbey and all of the grounds, then we had tea and cookies and made it back to York around 6:30 last night.  I grabbed a sandwich in town on the way home, and then I got back and suddenly realized I was done!  I was absolutely exhausted once the realization hit me (and I also didn't sleep too much on Friday night), so I turned on the TV and zoned out in bed, and it was so nice.  Zoning out in front of the TV is such a luxury these days, since we don't have a TV at home, and I found this British show called "Fool Me" where magicians do tricks in front of Penn and Teller, and if Penn and Teller can't figure out how they did the trick, the magician wins a trip to Las Vegas to perform with them.  It was really fun.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the abbey.  It was pretty cool, and a really nice day, even though it was threatening to rain all morning.  The abbey was apparently constructed in 1132 by some renegade Cistercian monks, and it went into disrepair during the reign of Henry the VIII in the early 1500's when he founded the Church of England and quit funding the Catholic Church in England.  (Or something like that - more info at the Wikipedia link.)

This is actually a church on the grounds of the abbey, constructed in the late 1800's.  I'm becoming a European church snob, apparently, because I couldn't be bothered to take pictures of the inside.  1800's?  Pffft.  Unimpressed.

The abbey in the background, seen from across the grounds.

Now I'm at the train station and starting to get a bit peckish.  (I've noticed I've started staying "bit" a lot more just in the past few days.  And I'm finally getting used to looking to the right before I cross the street, just in time to leave this silly country.)  I think I'm going to get some porridge (i.e. oatmeal) from the café in the train station.

Some of the signs here are really funny to me.  Like this one: "Do not struggle on the stairs."

There was a really great one in my hotel room that said, "IN CASE OF FIRE, DO NOT RUN.  It tends to cause panic."  I don't think they're trying to be funny, but it cracks me up.

Also, people keep saying "thank you" when they do things for me.  It is really throwing me off, because then I don't know what to say back.  A waiter poured me coffee at the conference dinner, and then said thank you.  And the woman who served me breakfast at the bed and breakfast kept saying thank you when she would bring me things.  I just don't know what to do, so I've been having a lot of conversations that go like this:

"Would you like white toast or brown toast this morning?"
"Brown toast, please."
"All right, thank you."
"..........thank you..."
[Then she comes back and hands me my toast.]
"Thank you."
"..................thank you..."

I obviously can't say "you're welcome", but it's kind of ridiculous for two people to thank each other like 8 times in the same conversation.

This may be related to the fact that I do not understand the usage of the word cheers.  I think it can alternately mean thank you, you're welcome, and something like go ahead.  Because I was walking home the other evening, and a guy on a bike stopped and said "cheers" as I passed.  Ok, it's not "thank you", because he stopped for me, so it might be like, "don't worry, I see you and am not going to run over you, so go ahead", or he might be a creepy dude and I should just keep walking and not respond in any way.

Never before have I felt so confused about my own language.  I'm ready to go back to France, where I know what everything means. ;)

Au revoir, l'Angleterre!  Bonjour, la France!

Gallivanting

I'm in York!

(If staying in academia means I get to keep gallivanting around Europe periodically, count me in.)

I went with Karen to the train station this morning, so she could head off the airport to go back to Vienna, and I could get on the train to England for my conference.  I was seated next to a really sweet French girl who was going to London alone for the first time, hoping to find work for the summer.  We mostly spoke French, although I tried to help her practice her English a bit too.  It took us about 2 hours to get to London, and only about 20 minutes to go through the English Channel!  It was really weird knowing we were going underwater, and picturing where we were on the map, and then - hop! - back above ground, with all the signs in English again.  I keep trying to speak French to people here, though.  It's like my brain knows I'm in a foreign country, in Europe, and it just won't let me speak English to strangers.  It's quite odd.

Well, Karen and I finally went to the Sainte Chapelle over the weekend, an amazing cathedral that dates from the 13th century and that I meant to visit the whole time I was in Paris last time, but never made it for various reasons.  I got some stunning photos from that, but I don't want to post them just yet - I want to show you my photos from this evening.

So I changed trains in London, which involved going outside and across the street from St. Pancras station to King's Cross, and that was all I got to see of London, unfortunately.  Then it was just over 2 more hours up to York, through the English countryside.  I got in around 5:45 this evening, only that was 6:45 my time, meaning I was starting to get hungry.  I took a cab from the train station to the guest house where I'm staying, and the cab driver was fantastic.  Super friendly, jovial, joking, with a great northern English accent, and he pointed a lot of things out to me on the drive to the guest house.  He also apparently lives a block down the street, and he told me to come knock if I need anything!

He also helped me count out the money I owed him; I took some English pounds out of an ATM in King's Cross station, but it is just funny money to me.  I'm totally fine with euros, they seem like real money and I recognize the denominations of bills and coins and can count them out just fine, but English money might as well be Monopoly money printed in Chinese.  It's ridiculous.  I've never had the experience of holding a handful of coins and having absolutely no idea what any of them are worth.  I have so much more sympathy for foreigners who can't count change now.  It's a very odd feeling to have to turn every coin over in your hand multiple times in order to find the small print that tells you what it's worth, and then to have to do some weird calculation in your head to figure our what it's really worth.

Anyway, I got to my guest house, which is on the south side of the city, dropped off my bags, and headed out exploring.  Here's where I'm staying while I'm here:

It's the dark brownish one on the very left, with the sign, called Friars Rest.  My room is the one immediately above the main entrance.

The city of York has about 200,000 people, according to Wikipedia, and the city center is surrounded by walls from medieval times.  It's maybe a 5 minute walk from where I am to the walls surrounding the city.

You can take the steps up on top of the walls, too, and walk around the perimeter of the city, like so:

And just like all European towns, there are awesome churches peaking out at you wherever you go:

What I really, really love about England so far is the color scheme, though.  It's all very earthy and drab, and then you get these catchy little punches of color everywhere you look.  If it's not some shade of brown or dirty green, it's a bold and vibrant flash and catches your eye right away.  It really stood out to me while I was walking around, and it really stands out in the photos I took of the town center.  Look for it.  :)

I wandered around for a while, looking for a place to eat, when this tea shop finally drew me in.  The view was lovely, and there was a woman playing the piano, and it was all very soothing.  Everything looked so delicious, but I ultimately had to go for the fish and chips and peas with a delicious English lager made right in the area.

Right after I took that picture, a very English looking young man came and sat down next to me and ordered "one of your lovely cream teas, please".  He was so not from York.  The accent up here is really down home, inn-keeper sounding, and this guy sounded straight out of Oxford and was carrying a small bit of luggage.  So after both sitting next to each other, alone, for a while, I eventually decided to make good on my promise to myself that I would talk to random strangers while I'm here, and I said, "So how weird is it if I strike up a conversation with you?"  And he said it wasn't that weird at all, but that it might be a bit awkward, with him being English and all.  He was a historian who had taught at Cambridge for 10 years and now teaches history at a school in London.  A taaaad bit on the stuffy side, but quite friendly, and it was a nice little chat.  I wished he was from York so I could get a better handle on the accent up here, though.  Although I guess this is what happens when you choose a lovely tea room for dinner; you meet other people who choose lovely tea rooms for dinner.  If I want to talk to some Yorkies, I'll have to pluck up the courage to go into a pub.

After dinner, I needed to walk off the fish and chips, so I took a nice, roundabout, indirect way back to the guest house.  There are two little rivers that go through the town, and I crossed one of them on the way back:

There was also a sandwich shop with a rather cryptic message on the left side of its sign:

And I walked by the tower that either had something to do with Jews being executed during World War Two, or the Duke of York nursery rhyme, or maybe both.  My taxi driver mentioned both things at one point, and I can't remember if they were both in reference to this landmark or not.  It was a bit of a whirlwind tour, and I had no idea where we were for any of it.

These people live a few doors down from my guest house, and they apparently consume a positively comical quantity of onions:

And finally, I made it back to my temporary home!  Doesn't even the door to my room look cozy and cute?  And I'd like to think the teddy bear was put there just to welcome me.

Last note on this evening: it is somewhat terrifying that they drive on the left side of the street here.  You don't realize how much it messes everything up until you have to cross the street a lot, and you can't keep straight which way the traffic should be coming from...

(aaaaack there are French people walking by outside my window and it's messing me up)

... so every time I have to do it, I look both ways about four times.  I also keep walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk, or through tight spaces, or whatever, because people tend to follow traffic patterns when they walk, and you don't realize it until you're in a place with different traffic patterns.  When I got off the train I kept thinking "What is wrong with these people?  Why do they keep walking right into me while I'm trying to get around with this big suitcase?"  And then I would realize that I was going up the wrong side of the stairs, or walking on the wrong side of the pathway again.  D'oh.

Well, I think it's time for some tea (I have my own electric kettle in my room!), and probably bed pretty soon.  I'm tired, and it's going to be a very long couple of days.

And I have to get up early in the morning, because I'm having a full English breakfast, which I'm ridiculously excited about.  This is only my second time staying in a bed and breakfast, and I wish I could do it more often, because it's so very fun.

Well, goodnight for now!

Obligatory, Gratuitous Eiffel Tower Pictures (etc. etc.)

Karen is here!  Roger's sister is visiting me from Vienna this weekend, and I think I may have already gained a few pounds from all the delicious food we've been consuming...

We lucked out and had a gorgeous day today for our mini sightseeing tour.  The city is just blanketed in dreamy, fluffy, cotton-candy clouds, and we took the opportunity to go up in the Arc de Triomphe and take pictures of the landscape, and then to walk down by the Eiffel Tower and take all the touristy shots you're supposed to take.  I didn't do a lot of that while I actually lived here, and it was fun to just be like a tourist all day today.

We've also been trying to walk a lot to undo some of the damage of all of the delicious food we've been eating...

The Arc de Triomphe, seen from towards the end of the Champs Elysées.

The inside of the Arc, before we went up inside it.

Looking down the Champs Elysées toward the bottom.  The huge, long building running perpendicular to the Avenue, at the very end, is the Louvre.  If you look at the very right of the photo, along the horizon, you can also see the two towers of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Looking straight down at l'Eglise St. Augustin (a pretty church), and to the left, on the hill, you can see the Basilique du Sacré Coeur, which is pretty close to where we're staying right now.

My goodness, I love this city.

Karen in front of Ye Olde Tower.

Looking through the bottom of the Tower, at all the tourists and the gorgeous sky.

I never get tired of taking versions of this picture.

Moi, along the Seine.

I have lots of work to get done this weekend, before I leave for my conference on Tuesday, so I should get to it instead of posting on here!

Dans le coin: Canal St. Martin

Here are some pictures from my walk this evening.  I'm a little disappointed at how the sky turned out in most of them - it was really nice, but really subtle, and because the light conditions were low, my camera did a really good job of adjusting its settings to let in more light, making the very subtle, darkening sky not quite as subtle or dark as it really was.

We're so, so lucky to be staying in the Canal St. Martin neighborhood.  It's so cute, and so "authentically Parisian" without being touristy at all!

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This shot is looking right down at our street.  There are SO many bike lanes in Paris now, and public bikes everywhere!  It is amazing!  I'm getting so much exercise and getting to see so much of Paris.  I love it.

Public bikes!  And a lot of the bike lanes go in between the parked cars and the curb (or here, between the parked bikes and the curb), so you're protected from traffic.  It is awesome.

Sunset at 10:15?  Don't mind if I do!

This café/brasserie has been calling my name since we got here.  They had live music on Friday night, and it just looks so very cozy.  It's right across the street from us, too, so we'll definitely have to go at least once before we leave.

The past few days have been tiring, but beautiful, but sometimes a little discouraging.  Tiring because we've been posting a lot of flyers, a little discouraging because we haven't gotten much of a lot of response yet, and beautiful because this entails walking and biking all over Paris, which is of course great, and I've been sleeping really well!

It's been raining off and on the past two days, too, and we even got a heck of a thunderstorm the night before last.  I love summer thunderstorms and I've missed them, and there are few things more romantic than lying in bed in Paris with the windows open, listening to the falling rain.

I went for a run along the canal yesterday and got caught in the pouring rain for a while, which was fun but not something I want to repeat every day, so between that and all the walking and biking we did yesterday, and then the drizzle that was coming down this morning, I was sore and not feeling like a second day of rain-running in a row, so I didn't run this morning.  That worked out fine, because we did lots more walking and biking today, so I definitely still got my exercise in.  Even though I'm eating at least one pastry a day, I might end up losing weight on this trip!  Gotta love that French paradox.

My Facebook friends may have already seen this, but when we were posting flyers today, I had the following exchange with a French police officer:


French police officer: You can't put that poster here.
me: But then why is this other poster already here?
him: Because they put it up when I wasn't looking.
me: Ok, well, we'll take it down, then.
him: Ok, you can put it up when I'm not looking.


Oh France.  I have missed you, and you are much easier to love when I'm only here for a few weeks.

No, *whoa*.

I am one of those annoying Francophiles who is just hopelessly in love with France, it turns out.  It feels so good to be here.  I feel like I've come home, in a way, but I know that's completely ridiculous.

It is so unbelievably gorgeous tonight.  74 degrees with a fantastic breeze and still just as light out at 9:03 as it was at 6:03.  We are exhausted but I am so perfectly content.  I was able to stay awake until I got on the plane from San Francisco to Charlotte, then slept for about 3-4 hours on the plane to Charlotte, changed planes, and slept about 5-6 hours on the way to Paris.  Then I met up with my friends at the airport and we made our way to this beautiful apartment in this fantastic neighborhood, explored a bit, walked around a lot, bought a bunch of groceries, walked around a lot more, then finally came back and opened all the windows and ate bread and cheese and strawberries for dinner.

I kind of want to stay here forever.

There will be many more pictures in the days to come, but for now, I should probably try to get a liiiiittle bit of work done.  This has turned into a weird, Twilight Zone, never-ending day, and I'm going to completely pass out in not a very long time, but dang.  Life is good.

The entryway to our apartment for the next few weeks.  The wallpaper in the entryway is probably the weirdest I've ever seen, but this place is overall completely fantastic.  Straight ahead is the bathroom, to the left is the kitchen, and just to the right of this shot is the front door.

Looking from the front door into the two main rooms.  I get the pull-out couch on the left, and to the right is a cozy little bedroom.

Looking at the balcony, with our little table and chairs.  We're on the top floor, so the view is pretty neat!   (And there's even an elevator!  It only holds two people at a time, but it's still pretty exciting, since we're on the 8th floor.)

Me trying to get a good shot of myself and the view out the little window in the bathroom.  Too much sunlight to see out the window, unfortunately.

Looking out the kitchen window.

Looking off of our balcony, to the right, towards the Canal St. Martin (which you will get pictures of soon).

Looking off our balcony to the left.  Lots of cute little neighborhood bars and cafés to check out in this neighborhood.