Venturing out

June 8, 2021 Megan | Caffeine & A Carry OnLeave a comment

Against what was beginning to seem like truly all odds, life in France has begun to return to something vaguely resembling “normal.” After more than six months of lockdown, May 19th was the first day of déconfinement, and folks here have wasted no time at all in rediscovering all of the things that make Paris Paris.

Dani and I are certainly no exception 😅

I can only speak for myself, but things had been pretty bleak since about February. The novelty of living in Paris (even in lockdown) and beginning a brand new job had helped keep my spirits up through the first couple of months of confinement, but once cases really began to climb at the end of January and into early February, resulting in a 6 PM curfew, things got tough. I was not in a great space mental health-wise, so when May 19th rolled around, I was more than ready to reintegrate.

That very first day, we practically ran around the corner to have lunch on the terrace of La Belle Equipe, a restaurant that we’d enjoyed getting takeout from during confinement, and we were so excited to finally have the chance to actually sit there and have a meal. And honestly? It was like nothing had even happened – the restaurant was full and bustling, and the servers were dashing about as if it had only been six hours since their last sit-down service, and not six months. At one point the skies opened up and it began to pour rain, but the weather didn’t even phase us – we were just so damn happy to finally be free!

Since then, we’ve been filling our weekends with as much as we can, whether it’s a trip to a museum

a lunch with friends in the suburbs

Post-lunch cheese platter (none for me, the cheese hater). Unfortunately this was the only photo I managed to take all day!

or even a short trip outside of Paris:

For years, each time we’ve come to Paris, our friend Liz has insisted that we simply must make time to visit Giverny and see Claude Monet’s gardens. We had never managed to make time for it; not for lack of interest, but it just seemed like a hassle, and we’ve always had such limited time in Paris that it was hard to justify leaving it for a day.

Well, now that we live here, we figured there’d be no better time for a trip to Giverny than a weekend in May before the return of tourists (and when the flowers are all still in bloom). And honestly? We couldn’t believe what we had been missing!

We woke up early and took the train from Saint Lazare out to Vernon, a small town just barely within the beginning limits of Normandy. Our original plan was to spend some time poking about Vernon before catching the shuttle over to Giverny, but given that the shuttle was a bit expensive (ten euros round trip, per person!) and we had the time and energy to spare, we decided to walk the one hour and fifteen minutes from Vernon to the Fondation Claude Monet.

It turned out to be a great decision – the walk took us along the Seine, where there was plenty of greenery, flowers, and cute houses to gawk at. There was even a nature trail that let us get off the main road for a bit.

Once we arrived in Giverny, it was like walking into a fairy tale village. Old stone houses with painted shutters and stone walls covered in roses and ivy…it was as if we’d wandered directly into one of Monet’s paintings.

To say nothing of the gardens themselves! The entire property – the house, the grounds, the cows moo-ing in the field just beyond the famous bassin aux nymphéas – was magnificient.

A must-visit, no doubt about it.

We topped it all off with a lazy late lunch (complete with frosty glasses of rosé) in a cute little courtyard before catching the shuttle back to Vernon. On the train ride back to Paris, we marveled at our newfound freedom and the instant attitude adjustment that comes with simply spending some time outdoors and away from the city. We’re both very much looking forward to taking more little trips like this throughout the summer!

Spring Break in Munich

May 1, 2019May 1, 2019 Megan | Caffeine & A Carry OnLeave a comment

We kicked off our weeklong spring break (two weeks for Dani!) by hopping on a quick flight over to Munich, Germany. You’ll remember from our trip to Krakow that technically, we have been to Munich before, but this time we actually went there on purpose!

I was going to title this post “Mediocre Munich” because, to be honest, we both felt kind of meh about it, but I changed my mind once I was reminded of Nomadic Matt’s recent blog post about globalization. The fact that I feel kind of “blah” about Munich is not really about Munich at all, but rather my warped tourist’s perception of what I thought Munich should be. The reality did not match the myth that I had created for myself, which isn’t Munich’s fault at all. It’s mine. Munich does not owe me shit.

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That said, Munich was fine. We had a good time, but it’s not a place I feel particularly compelled to go back to. We got in to the city really late on Saturday evening and went straight to our hotel, so that we could be up and at ’em for our 10 AM free walking tour. The walking tour was a basic introduction to the city, but we enjoyed our guide so much that during the tour’s short bathroom break, we immediately booked his afternoon Third Reich-themed walking tour, which was just as excellent. So the bulk of our first day was devoted to learning more about Munich itself, and we did enjoy ourselves quite a lot on the walking tours, though the weather left a bit to be desired. In fact, it was cold!

Naturally, we used the cold weather as an excuse to hang out in Munich’s most famous beer hall, the Hofbrauhaus, both in between our two walking tours and right afterward. Is it touristy and ridiculous? Yes. Did we care? Not even slightly. I mean, the beers were as big as our heads!

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The very next day we took a day trip to Salzburg, and then we had one more full day in Munich before we took off to Brussels. We chose to spend the majority of it at the Viktualienmarkt, a huge open-air market in the center of town that also has a beer garden right at its center. It’s much more frequented by the locals and quite reasonably priced. By this time, the weather had greatly improved, so we didn’t mind spending a few hours outdoors in the beer garden at all. After, we went to the Royal Residence museum and then popped over to spend a few minutes in the Englischer garten, Munich’s version of Parc de la tête d’or.

The part that sort of soured me on Munich, though, was how we were treated by the people there. We got the royal tourist treatment on several occasions – and not in a good way. There were certain things going in that we expected, like being brought and charged for a bottle of water at dinner instead of getting a pitcher of tap water, because I lacked the German skills to specifically ask for a pitcher. The same kind of thing happens in Paris, though because I speak French we are usually able to avoid that kind of price gouging for tourists. But in Munich we just felt like we were being constantly ripped off – a bottle of water was twice as expensive on our bill than what was shown on the menu. Our meals were more expensive – on two occasions at two separate restaurants, our servers heard us speaking English and swapped our German menus for English ones, which had higher prices. And on two occasions at two separate restaurants, when the dinner bill came the waiters “reminded” us that, “the price doesn’t include tip! How much would you like to tip me – 20 percent??” which not only is far from the general European practice of rounding up to an even figure on the bill, but is just a tacky way to communicate. And our cab ride to the airport the morning we left (public transit didn’t run that early) was seventy euros for a twenty-six minute ride. I couldn’t help but compare it to my experiences in both New York and Paris, where a cab ride to the airport (often up to an hour of driving, especially in Paris) has never cost me more than 50 bucks.

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So yeah, we left Munich feeling a little underwhelmed and turned off. I don’t want to make generalizations about a place and its people – I’m sure if we spent more time there, off the beaten tourist track, that we would have a much different view. Talking to the locals we encountered in the Viktualienmarkt was really the highlight of our experience in Munich, and I would have enjoyed a lot more of that and a lot less feeling like the “stupid American abroad” trope. Perhaps we’ll go back one day – to Germany, certainly, there’s just so much to see and experience – but for now, we say auf wiedersehen.

Odds & Ends

April 4, 2019 Megan | Caffeine & A Carry OnLeave a comment

Life has been rolling merrily along here in France. My teaching schedule this semester has been mercifully easy – so easy, in fact, that I’m beginning to wonder how I’ll ever adapt to having a “regular” job again. I only teach one class on Thursday evenings, and then three classes in a row on Fridays, from 8 AM until 2 PM. That’s left plenty of time to explore Lyon, read the MA list, and put in some hours for freelance projects.

6F095565-D8C8-4BB6-A570-313C0B4E83C9 — Some of our best moments in March

We’ve not done as much traveling this semester as we would really like (the passage of time has always and will forever follow an academic calendar), mostly due to the dog and Dani’s school schedule which is a bit more punishing than my current five-and-a-half-day-weekend situation. Taking a trip back to the States also set us back a bit financially, as one of those trips was an unpleasant surprise. Spring Break is on the horizon, though – and we’ve got an adventure planned!

Until then, we’ve just been enjoying the little pleasures that come along with living here. The weather has been exceptionally nice, so that has meant lots of afternoon picnics in the park and walks along the river. We try to hit the open air market at least once a week, and enjoy a coffee or a pint on a terrace in the afternoons. I also recently had the pleasure of finally meeting someone in person who I have known for years online; she is part of my personal learning network on Twitter and was in Lyon with students for their spring break. We were able to have dinner together, and it was so nice to finally get to speak with her face-to-face!

Also, just a few days ago we went to our first European soccer match. It was a match between the local team, Olympique Lyonnais, and the football club from Rennes for the “coupe de France” which, as far as I can tell, is the game that decides the best team in France. In an attempt to fill up the stadium, tickets went on sale for only 1 euro! A local friend of ours, knowing that we’ve wanted to make it to a match this year, bought a few and invited us along. Unfortunately, OL lost to Rennes in the last few moments of the match, but it was fun and exciting nonetheless! A few months back Dani bought a ticket package to the last three matches of the women’s World Cup, so we’re looking forward to (hopefully) seeing the United States play at the same stadium in July.

We’ve also settled on a return date to the United States: August 7th. It’s exactly one week shy of the one-year “anniversary” of our arrival in France. I’m trying not to get too down in the dumps about going back home, but it’s hard to avoid getting caught up in the countdown. There is still a lot to look forward to in the months to come – we have a TON of travel plans coming up and our best friends are coming to visit in June. I just know that once the “busy” season sets in, as summer begins, that the days and weeks are going to fly by even faster than they have been. So for now, I’m enjoying this “slow” season and trying to soak up as much as I can with the time we have left.

Delicious Krakow

February 10, 2019 Megan | Caffeine & A Carry On1 Comment

I know this post is super late, given that we traveled to Krakow in November, but I just really have to talk about our food tour experience since it was such a great one. We’re food tour people – I’ve posted about our amazing experience in Rome here – and food tours have become our go-to activity in new places that we visit. It’s a fun way to see a city, and the guides typically make excellent restaurant recommendations for places that provide quality food and are authentic and not too overtaken by tourists.

We knew we definitely wanted to do a food tour while we were in Krakow, and we opted to book through Delicious Poland. They’re locally owned and operated, and though the company has expanded to include tours in other cities like Wroclaw and Warsaw, it was created in Krakow. In fact, our guide for our food tour through Kazimierz, the city’s former Jewish quarter, was the company’s CEO/co-founder, Kamila.

Having done several food tours, Dani and I have a pretty good idea of what we like and this one ticked all the boxes. It was a group experience, but small – there were only six of us, plus Kamila. We’ve been on larger tours and we’ve been on smaller tours where it was just us and the guide, and we definitely like the group atmosphere – there is just something fun about discovering and sharing new food with other people. But the one thing that we really loved about this particular tour through Krakow was that we tried foods that were totally traditional to Poland and that we also would probably never have tried on our own. I mean, everyone likes pierogies and potato pancakes – but pickled herring? Chilled beet soup? In all honesty, I would never order either at a restaurant, but I’m so glad we had the opportunity to try them on our food tour and that the food choices were not tailored to the palates of finicky tourists.

So, what did we eat?

We kicked off the tour at a pierogi take-out joint and sampled four different kinds of pierogies, three savory and one sweet. As it was getting close to the Christmas holidays, Kamila explained that the pierogies she chose were typical of those served at Christmas time in Krakow, and she explained how they are typically made (it sounds super tedious). From there, we walked further into Kazimierz and stopped at a restaurant where we the aforementioned chilled beet soup, which was surprisingly delicious and not at all “earthy’ tasting as one normally expects with beets. We also had zurek, a hot soup made from a sourdough starter. It reminded me a lot of the dill pickle soup at the Polish-American restaurant my family frequents. I’m not sure why I was initially put off by the idea of a sour soup, given that I quite like the dill pickle version, but the zurek was excellent.

From there, we went to a Polish vodka bar where we sampled two different kinds of vodka – one traditional/plain, and one flavored – accompanied by herring and other small bites, like smoked sheep’s milk cheese. I’ll be honest: this stop was my least favorite, food-wise, as I’m just not normally a fish person under the best of circumstances and herring is quite particular. But it’s typical in Poland to have herring alongside vodka, as the grease of the fish complements the bite of the alcohol, so I tried it. Final verdict: herring is not for me, but Dani liked it (as did the others in our group) so definitely don’t be put off by my unpopular take. I’m glad Kamila included this stop on the tour, since herring is everywhere in Krakow, so it added authenticity to the whole experience.

Wisely, we took some time to “walk it off” before heading over to a craft brewery, Ursa Maior. Krakow is big-time into craft beer (definitely NOT a problem for us) and this brewery in particular was cool for two reasons: one, the head brewer is a woman and two, they only serve their own beer, which is 100% vegan, natural, and locally made. Not much else to say on this stop – we love beer, so we loved it (obviously).

Finally, we had our stop for dinner at a restaurant where Dani and I had actually stopped for a light lunch earlier in the day…whoops. No matter – we were more than happy to eat there again because the food was amazing. We had a beef goulash and potato pancakes, followed up by a dessert (which I unfortunately don’t remember) and kompot, a juice made from a variety of boiled fruits.

It’s hard to make this look appetizing in a photo, but believe me, it was delicious.

To say that we left fat and happy would be an understatement. And, as a little side note and shout out to our awesome guide, Kamila, she helped me read the instructions on the cold medicine I had bought earlier in the day. She also recommended a great paczki place that we tried the very next morning (there was no way I was going to Krakow and not getting paczki). I went with Kamila’s suggestion of rose jam filling and all I can say is that the Michigan paczki market needs to get on board with that particular flavor, STAT.

Really, we can’t recommend Delicious Poland enough. This is not a sponsored post – we just know a good food tour when we see one, and this is right up there with our epic experience in Rome. If you ever find yourself in Poland, check them out – you won’t regret it!

Winter in Europe

January 28, 2019January 28, 2019 Megan | Caffeine & A Carry OnLeave a comment

The time is passing here much more quickly than we would like, as is evidenced by my lack of posting. I feel like I just wrote about our trip to Krakow (heck, I feel like we just went to Krakow) but here we are, end of January already.

We really enjoyed the Christmas season here. Between the Christmas markets that pop up at the end of November/early December and the Fête des Lumières in Lyon, it felt so much more festive than it normally does at home. The only thing missing was the snow – not that I particularly enjoy snow, but I did miss it during the holidays. Though I have to admit, it’s been really nice to be able to spend the season walking on (mostly) dry streets and in temperatures that have rarely descended below freezing.

We kicked off winter with a trip “up North” to visit our friend, Célia. We spent the weekend snuggling her new baby boy, visiting the Christmas market in Montbéliard (seriously impressive) and gorging ourselves on raclette and crêpes.

The weekend after was the Fête des Lumières, a yearly celebration where the entire city is lit up by various light displays and installations. Even though it was a “meh” year, according to our local friends, we were still sufficiently marveled. The atmosphere was just so nice…for four nights, everyone was outside exploring the city, and just about every café, store, and restaurant in town had a small table set up outside to serve vin chaud and other snacks to help keep everyone warm while they took in the sights.

Dani’s parents came to visit on Christmas. They spent two weeks with us; one week at our place in Lyon, and then we took off on an adventure to Paris (obviously) and Annecy, a small-ish city in the Alps. It was absolutely freezing cold in Annecy but ho-ly crap I could not have cared less – what a charming place. The mountains! The lake! The food!

Since they left, we’ve been hunkered down in Lyon, just enjoying the day-to-day. We moved apartments in mid-December and have been so glad to have a space that’s just for us. It’s tiny, but it’s perfect for the two of us and Lucie.

We have some fun travel plans coming up in the next few months, and I do want to re-cap a couple of other things from Krakow that we really enjoyed, now that my teaching schedule has been greatly reduced and I have the time to do more writing.

Toussaint in Krakow, Poland

November 28, 2018November 28, 2018 Megan | Caffeine & A Carry OnLeave a comment

As a teacher, I’ve always been more spoiled than most when it comes to time off during the year – though I tend to argue that summer breaks and the occasional week off during the school year are compensation for working nearly every single evening and every single weekend during the school year. It’s like cashing in your overtime all at once – which, coincidentally, is how overtime is usually paid here in France. It’s always been relatively rare that Dani and I get to benefit from having the same vacation time, but now that she’s a student at the university where I teach, we’re off school and work at the same time, which means…travel!

There’s no Thanksgiving in France, but most students get time off around la Toussaint, a holiday that falls on the first of November. For non-university students and staff the break is usually two weeks long, but for us, just a week. We decided to make the most of our time and check out a new-to-us country. Dani and I debated a bit over where we wanted to go – Barcelona was a momentary frontrunner – but we settled finally on Krakow, as I’ve always wanted to go and it was insanely inexpensive for the dates available to us.

While actually getting to Krakow was a huge headache – think delayed plane, missed connection, overnight in Munich, failed landing in Poland followed by a return to Munich – we finally arrived in Krakow about a day later than scheduled. The first night we were there was cold, foggy and rainy (which made for some pretty cool photos) but for the remaining days we got incredibly lucky with some seriously nice weather. Blue, sunny skies and changing fall leaves made Krakow all the more charming – not that it needs any help in that department.

We tend not to be overly finicky travelers – we mostly like to explore on foot and eat and drink well. Krakow offered us plenty of opportunities for all of that – and it was so cheap. I almost don’t like telling people that, because I want it to remain that way. There are so many free walking tours, craft breweries and distilleries, fantastic coffee shops and delicious restaurants that it would be impossible, I think, to go to Krakow and not have a fantastic time. And the people were so kind and welcoming, despite our total lack of any Polish language skills whatsoever. It’s really made us want to explore other parts of Poland.

A complete gem.

Dani with her bagel – did you know bagels were invented in Krakow?

Daily Life

November 4, 2018 Megan | Caffeine & A Carry On2 Comments

It’s been a minute since my last update, but life went a little crazy once the semester started! Then the next thing I knew, six weeks had gone by and here we are, halfway through the first semester with Christmas quickly approaching. We’ve started to settle in to life in Lyon…there are still a few kinks left to work out, but so far we’ve just been enjoying ourselves and lamenting how quickly the time’s been passing.

the roman ruins just up the street from our place

Dani’s been keeping occupied with her French classes, which she has for a few hours each day. She’s been also working remotely for her former boss in Michigan; finding a job in France is super challenging, even moreso if you don’t really speak any French, but for now she’s plenty busy. I currently teach seven classes per week, down from the NINE I originally had for the first month of the semester. My students range in abilities from A2 (beginners) to C1 (advanced), and each class that I teach lasts nearly two hours. The curriculum for each course has already been designed by another teacher; we’re invited to put our own spin on things, but thankfully I don’t have to create anything from scratch. I don’t know how I’ll go back to teaching high school after being relatively spoiled prep-wise at both Penn State and Lyon 2. This semester I only teach on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which means I have time to pursue other projects (freelance, reading the Master’s list, play with the dog) on Thursdays and Fridays. I am not-so-secretly hoping for a similar schedule in the spring, but I don’t think I’ll be so lucky!

Other than that, we’ve just been enjoying living in a city once again. There is no shortage of great places to eat and drink, or things to do and see, so our weekends are normally full. We’ve instituted a weekly “Wine Wednesday” tradition, which involves mostly finding a bar or a restaurant to have a glass of wine (or beer) and perhaps a couple of snacks, so that we can enjoy as many different places as possible during our time here. Luckily for us, the concept of “happy hour” is alive and extremely well in Lyon! If we don’t go to an actual bar, we’ll usually opt for something al fresco next to one of the two rivers than run through the city. The weather has been so good that we’ve been trying to soak up as much outside time as possible, before it turns gray, rainy and cold.

the campus of the university where Dani takes classes; I teach at technically the same university, but a different (and MUCH less photogenic) campus

Lucie has been adjusting well, too – lots of new things to sniff in a city this size! I think she feels a little cooped up in our current living situation (not a lot of room for her to roam freely) but other than that, she’s been enjoying the freedoms that come with being a dog in France. Unlike in the US dogs are permitted basically everywhere here, with a few exceptions – it’s not uncommon to see a dog on the floor at a restaurant, or running through the aisles at a grocery store.

45320908_549152498879146_5244557631405686784_n — weekend open-air markets

45474724_280135939282384_1707436451496460288_n — the banks of the Rhone

45512070_324091635052809_2478972007044087808_n — velo’v, the city bike sharing system

a rare glimpse of fall leaves at Parc de la Tête d’Or

Pérouges

September 11, 2018 Megan | Caffeine & A Carry OnLeave a comment

We’ve been in Lyon for about three weeks now and while we love the city, we’re going a little stir crazy. Classes don’t start here until the 17th, which means that I’ve been effectively “off duty” work-wise since the beginning of May. (I don’t count teaching online, as that wasn’t really an everyday commitment like grad school/full-time teaching.) We moved back to Michigan at the end of July, so Dani has also been off for the last two-plus months; while it’s been nice, we’re also both very much feeling the need to get back to a routine.

So in an effort to keep ourselves occupied until we’re back to the long-awaited “real world”, we decided to take a day trip to Pérouges, a medieval town just up the road from Lyon. At first I was a little bit skeptical, as I thought it might be packed with tourists and totally inauthentic as such little towns can be (I’m looking at you, Frankenmuth and Mont-Saint-Michel) but much to my surprise, we had the place (mostly) to ourselves!

There wasn’t much to do in the cité itself other than take in the scenery and eat which is, let’s be honest, not a problem for either of us. There are some walking trails that circle Pérouges and then go out into the surrounding countryside that vary in length from 30 minutes to about 2.5 hours. Since Lucie came with us and we were operating on a semi-strict timeline because of the train schedule, we picked the 1.5 hour long trail. We ended up not finishing the whole thing because it was blazing hot and poor Lucie was wrecked, so after not quite an hour we took a shortcut back to Pérouges, had an absolutely enormous lunch, then milled about the town until it was time to had back to Méximieux to catch the train to Lyon.

You can click on any one of the photos below to see a larger version!

Dani gets angry when I don’t properly credit her photos. She took this one!

pc: Dani

The healing waters of Vichy, France

January 5, 2017May 31, 2018 Megan | Caffeine & A Carry On4 Comments

France wasn’t really in my 2016 travel plans, but last year an opportunity came up that I knew I had to jump on. It was a scholarship for American French teachers, sponsored by the French Embassy in Washington D.C., for a two-week pedagogical “internship” at a language school in the city of Vichy. Very nearly all expenses paid – tuition for the language school, room and board with a host family, a round-trip train ticket from Paris to Vichy, a $600 allowance to defray the cost of a plane ticket, and 200 euros in spending money.

Um, yeah. Sign me up, please.

The only problem was that the scholarship is super competitive. Like, only 20-teachers-nationwide-competitive. Added to that, I didn’t even find about it until literally three days before the deadline Still, I figured I’d give it a shot (it didn’t cost anything to apply – but I did pay to overnight my materials to Chicago) so I cobbled together the application materials as best as I could (realizing that I had lost my passport in the process – thank goodness I had made a copy of the first page for my records!) and crossed my fingers until the day the notifications were to be sent out to the recipients (it was a Friday).

Well, the day came and went and I hadn’t heard anything. I let myself feel disappointed but ultimately moved on – I had rushed to get the application together, after all, so I couldn’t be too surprised – when Wednesday arrived and so did the e-mail that started with Félicitations!

I may have cried a little in front of my students. They were nice about it though!

A few months later I was on a train from Paris to Vichy.

Vichy is an interesting place; it’s in the center of France, right in the midst of a chain of dormant volcanos called Puy-de-Dôme. For literally centuries, Vichy has been known as a place of healing and restoration – there are numerous natural springs that provide the city with mineral water. Some is freely drinkable, and you can fill up as you like at a couple of local wells. The water is naturally carbonated and tastes slightly salty. The others are found in a beautiful art nouveau building in the center of town and can only be drunk with a prescription from the doctor citing your specific ailments and what variety of mineral water you need to drink to cure them.

There are also hot springs and spas are in abundance. Likewise, outdoor activities are in abundance – rowing, biking, horseback racing at the Hippodrome, a lovely riverside park for jogging or rollerblading. It’s a place that values health, quietness and calm. It was lovely. I was surprised at how much I loved it there, particularly considering Vichy’s more recent history.

La source des Célestins, just steps from my host family’s house

While Vichy has long been known as a sort of “resort town”, just slightly more than 70 years ago Vichy became known for something else. The French government, on the eve Germany’s invasion of Paris, packed up and left the City of Lights while simultaneously assuring her citizens that there was nothing to fear. Yet the Parisians awoke one day to bombardments, and also to find that their leaders had fled – to Vichy. Vichy became the new capital of France, and forevermore a symbol of the French government’s ultimate collaboration with the Nazi regime. Maréchal Pétain, the president of the Vichy regime, was complicit in the deportation of thousands of Jews – including children (originally denied by the Nazis, Petain sent them anyway) – to ghettos and ultimately, death camps such as Auschwitz.

In Vichy, there are no traces of the war years. No museums, no memorials, no commemorative plaques on any buildings as there are in Paris. The quiet calm of the city makes it hard to believe that such atrocious ugliness happened there. Yet I’m sure the citizens of Vichy – largely made up of elderly retirees – must carry the memory quietly within themselves.

Or perhaps, just as the water of Vichy has healed the many thousands of people who have come to drink from its springs, the city itself has been healed, too.

Five Years Since France

January 27, 2016May 31, 2018 Megan | Caffeine & A Carry On2 Comments

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Five years ago today, I stepped on a plane and my life changed forever. I had just gone through a major transition in my life and wasn’t sure what would be waiting for me when the plane landed in Paris. I was excited, terrified, sad, nervous – everything, as I faced the prospect of spending five months living and studying in a foreign country, away from my friends and my family and my familiar.

It wasn’t easy at first. Landing at the CDG airport was a shock – we (I was with two other girls from my same university) were greeted by a clearly homeless and mentally ill man with no pants or underwear on who was lighting magazine pages on fire inside the airport. The first time I ever spoke French to a real, live French person was to buy train tickets (I planned out everything I was going to say, word-for-word, before I got in line). The bathrooms were filthy and cost money to use. It was freezing cold in the train station, and the only area with heat was a closed-in waiting area that smelled so strongly of urine I could practically taste it. The jetlag caught up with me once I sat in my seat on the train, and though I was so exhausted I could barely keep my eyes open, I was terrified of falling asleep and missing my stop.

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And then we arrived in Angers, met our host families and went to our new homes where it really started to sink in – this is it. I won’t see my home or my family again until June. I cried the first night as I Skyped with my mom.

But slowly, Angers started to feel comfortable. My French exploded, and I felt more confident in my second language that my first, wanting to avoid betraying myself as an outsider. I made friends with my host mom’s daughter, fell in love with a little café and their amazing lattés, and even reconnected with some friends that I had originally met during my time in New York, who I thought I would probably never see again after they announced they were moving to Paris (life is so funny sometimes). I got to know people from all around the world. And then when June rolled around, I didn’t want to leave.

I’ve been back to France many, many times since then. I even revisited Angers in 2013 and had lunch with my host mom in that big, old house. It felt like slipping back into a favorite old sweater. Five years – it seems like so long ago but just yesterday at the same time. Even so, I can’t help thinking that I’m not quite done with Angers yet.

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caffeine & a carry on

teaching, traveling, and drinking a lot of coffee

Tag: europe