The French really do like French Fries....

When I was in Marseille I had my first "Kebab Sandwich." Basically there is a menu with different types of meat and you just choose one. When I got my sandwich I opened up the nice wrapping to see a mound of fries, not beside the sandwich but on top of it. Apparently this is common practice in France, I think it's often called the "Americano," haha. I've seen this done with hotdogs, regular sandwhiches and kebabs. If you go to a boulangerie and buy a baguette sandwich then you'll get just a plain sandwich, but any type of fast food kebab/pizza/sandwich place will most likely serve you fries as a topping. Enjoy!

Canadian Food Update

Previously I wrote about the ERASMUS fair that our school had, and the poutine gone horribly wrong. I had trouble thinking of many Canadian "food specialties," but today I came across a really good website that lists cool, not-so-well-known, places in Paris. On that list was a bar called The Great Canadian Pub, and being Canadian I was obviously curious so I went to their website and this is what they stated about their menu:

"Goûtez nos spécialités canadiennes comme les crêpes servies avec du sirop d’érable, le cheesecake, la tarte à la noix de pécan, le café « Tim Horton », la salade César, le jus « Clamato », la bière canadienne, les ailes de poulet les plus délicieuses de Paris.. et plein d’autres bonnes choses…"

For those of you who don't speak French:

"Try our Canadian specialties like crepes served with maple syrup, cheescake, peacan pie, Tim Horton's coffee, Cesar Salad, Clamato Juice, Canadian beer, the best chicken wings in Paris and many other great things..."

Aside from the syrup, Tim Horton's and Canadian beer, are any of the other items specifically Canadian??? I really have no idea, I suppose they are most likely North American... but either way that menu sure makes Canadians sound healthy ;) It is a pub though, so I guess it can't be expected to serve much healthy food.

French Toilets

So in France there are still many traditional/old schoool toilets (pictured above). I have had the unfortunate pleasure of having to use one, and it is really inconvenient and just plain difficult, not to mention kind of gross. Two of my fellow ERASMUS students who live in studios near Montmartre have these types of toilets in the halls outside of their studios...and nothing else. I suppose you would get used to it, but honestly I like to be comfortable when I go to the bathroom... not to perform a balancing/aiming act. I came across some of these toilets in a club that my school was throwing a party at the other night as well and it just seemed like a bad idea to me. Do they really expect drunk girls to be able to use these toilets properly? Especially the French girls who seem to take drinking to a whole new level. Anyways, to state the obvious, I avoided those toilets and used the one regular one in the bathroom. I just wonder why they still have these types of toilets here, what is the benefit? Does anyone actually prefer them?

Enjoying the Weather

The weather in Paris has been pretty gorgeous lately. You would almost think that the seasons were changing to spring, not winter. There was a pretty cold period in October (around the time when all my visitors came!), but since then it has been fairly mild. The past week has been a bit rainy but there always seems to be some point during the day when the clouds break and the sun comes out and it just feels great to be outside taking in the view. Yesterday morning started off really rainy so I put on my rain boots and brought out my umbrella, ready to slosh through the puddles. But about 10 minutes after I left my apartment the sky cleared and I was able to have beautiful walk along the canal and then into the Marais. As soon as I got back to my apartment the rain started up again, so I had great timing. Today started off pretty miserably, but once again it has cleared up and I managed to go for a run along the canal (which is great to do on Sundays because they close the streets off to vehicles, so I don't have to worry about being run over). Anyways, I am hoping that this kind of weather lasts until my departure because I know come January and February I will have lots of snow waiting for me in Canada :) The picture above is one that I took from the balcony of my room early one morning a few weeks ago.

Salon du Vin: Wine Tasting

My landlord was nice enough to give me free tickets to the "Salon du Vin" that took place in Paris this weekend. Yesterday was the last day so I went with two of my friends to check it out. It was held at the Paris Expo and it was huge! When we got in we had no idea where to begin because there were just rows upon rows of stands all representing different independent wine makers. We each received a free wine glass and just ventured from stand to stand to try out wines from various regions in France. It was really fun and most of the people at the stands were very friendly. It was a great experience and definitely something that seems "typically French." I'd like to learn more about different wines, maybe when I start making money I will invest in some good quality bottles and start to hone my tastes. But for now, on my student budget I will stick to the grocery store variety :)

A Weekend in Marseille

I just got back from a beautiful weekend in Marseille! I've been to Marseille before, but just on a day trip a few summers ago while I was living in the south of France. I just wandered around the city, through the different markets and huge crowds of people out for a nice Saturday afternoon. It seemed like a very lively, southern, Mediterranean city, but it was just a glimpse. This past weekend I was lucky enough to have a friend from Canada to stay with just outside of the centre. He is also doing an exchange at a business school and his friend was gone for the weekend so my friend and I were able to have a room to stay in for free. It was really interesting to see another type of ERASMUS lifestyle. Unlike in Paris, most of the exchange students were living in one big residence a short bus ride from their school. It was almost like summer camp or first year university, everyone was really friendly and they did a lot of group activities together. There were communal kitchens where there were always groups of people cooking up a storm. It has much more of a relaxed, southern, style. We went out to a few different bars while we were there and saw a bit of what the nightlife in Marseille is like. It is definitely more casual compared to Paris, but it was a lot of fun.
We also did a lot of sight-seeing in and around the city. We tried some seafood at a really nice restaurant downtown as well (which was much cheaper than it would have been in Paris). My favourite part was going to "les calanques" which is what is pictured above. We hiked for around forty minutes to get there and it was well worth it. The view was absolutely breathtaking and it was really refreshing to breath some fresh air and be surrounded by nature. It made me miss the south of France, it is such a beautiful place. Overall the trip was really great, my friend was an amazing host and it was nice to get out of the city for a bit and experience some new things.

Here are some of my observations/interesting things I learned about Marseille:

1) It is the second biggest city in France (over 800,000)
2) It really does deserve its reputation as the "dirtiest city in France." The downtown streets were covered in litter.
3) You can definitely see certain differences in immigration trends. There is a lot stronger North African presence in Marseille, you can notice just by looking at the people and by the fact that there are kebab places on every corner. There are a lot of kebab places in Paris as well, but not nearly as many. I also noticed that there seemed to be a lot fewer Asian people in Marseille, I didn't see a single "Traiteur Chinois," or Japanese restaurant (which are both abundant in Paris).
4) I think that the people in Marseille speak slower, which is definitely good for understanding their French. I was told that there would be a really noticeable difference in accents, but I think the speed was the thing that I noticed most.
5) Marseille has a metro system, though it only consists of 2 lines (unlike Paris which has 14). The bus system is a bit strange though because it is really easy to just walk on a bus without a ticket, or without validating one (meaning you can just use it again). Once you validate a ticket it lasts for 1 hour and you can use it again within that hour. The only "control" that they have is random officers who will stop buses and check everyone for tickets, and fine those who don't have one. I didn't see any of these officers though and we took the bus quite a lot.

Chèques

The cheque is still a pretty common method of payment in France, unlike in Canada. In Canada the only things that we use cheques for are rent, paychecks (though direct deposits are becoming a lot more common), school trips and monetary gifts (birthdays, graduation, etc.). I rarely ever use my checkbook or see anyone paying for any commercial good with a cheque. I don't think you're really allowed to pay for much with cheques these days in Canada anyways. In Paris it's a different story, you can pay for your groceries, restaurant bill and many other thing with cheques. I've seen many a sign in stores reading something like "you must have 2 pieces of ID to pay by cheque." Usually the larger the amount of money, the more pieces of ID you have to show. I really started to notice the prominence of cheques here on my first day of class. It was my first business class in French and the teacher brought out the box of shiny new textbooks ready to be purchased. So the French kids started lining up to pay for a book and 80% of them had a checkbook in hand and began scribbling out the amount. I became a bit nervous thinking that maybe the teacher only accepted cheques as payment, but then I saw some students with cash in hand and breathed a sigh of relief. I never ended up getting a French bank account since I'm only here for a few months, so I can't exactly pay for anything with a cheque :)