ERASblog

Hej och välkommen tillbaka. Det är kul att se dig igen.

It’s not been a very eventful few days here in Siena, so uneventful in fact, that your usual blogmeister couldn’t be bothered to do anything and asked me to step in instead. As nothing has happened I thought I’d talk about one of the worst things about Siena.

In the garden of our little complex here there are 5 huge cats, each one at least 30 times my size! 3 of them are black, one being really, really fat, and the other two are some kind of grey and orange mix. It was a very traumatic experience when I was on my way out of the house the other day to go to the cheese shop and got set upon by this unruly mob of moggies. After some sleak footwork and with the help of the dog 2 doors down I managed to get away, but it was touch and go for a while. I’ve decided that the only way to solve this problem is to get rid of all the cats in Siena. To do this I think I’ll have to buff up a bit and then lure them all down to the train tracks, a bit like the pied piper of Hamlyn, and watch them all get run over. Then after that, I’ll be free to roam the city to my little heart’s content. I didn’t buy this new camera for nowt.

Boo Ya!

Hej och välkommen till min blogg! 

My name is Müs and I’ve been hired to help keep everyone informed as to the latest happenings here in Siena, as well as bringing you all the top headlines from the only Scandinavian country that matters, my home country, Sweden!

It has been a slow and rainy start to life here in Italy, with lots of pizza keeping us company along the way. I attended a football match but my boys from Siena lost :’(

Scwuffs and I enjoyed our first taste of Italian cuisine!

It’s been a hectic week in Sweden, with this being the main news headline;

One Irish road paver has been arrested while another is wanted by police in southern Sweden after the pair ordered a schoolboy to fill their truck with stolen gravel.

Gravel theft constitutes a capital offense here in Sweden and these two men and their 10 year-old accomplice can expect nothing less than the death penalty. The citizens of Brösarps Grus were relieved when their gravel was finally recovered and returned to them. An inventory is currently being taken to ensure every piece is accounted for. 

So that’s all from me this week. Until next time, Müs out!!

A world renowned blogger has been added to the payroll here at erasblog and will be chipping in with his two krona every so often. Exciting times. Check back soon!

It’s been a long four months, but after Erasblog’s acquisition by Google in October, the site is finally back up and ready for action, relaying to you, my loyal blogees, all the must know news and gossip about all things Tuscan and, on the rare occasion I bother straying further afield, Italian also. So welcome back, and I hope we enjoy the next six months together!

Usually the site would be so packed with photos that Bill Gates calls me to free up some bandwidth in order to speed up his production of Windows 7 (not that I’d want to do that), but the weather so far has been so awful that I don’t have any photos of ornate architecture and picturesque rolling hills crammed with olive groves and vineyards. If you’re interested in seeing photos of drains overflowing and old ladies falling over in the rainy street then you’ve come to the right place! For the moment, however, you will have to make do with boring old words to keep you warm during these bitter, snow filled English evenings. Saying that, I do have one photo to kick off the year, a photo which most of you have seen already, but I don’t have anything else to put here, so unlucky.

The above is the view from my window, if you crane your neck to the left slightly. It is a quintessential Tuscan landscape, and although it’s nice right now, it should be much nicer in the summer. It even smells nice! The only problem is that I will be moving rooms at the end of the month, as the wardrobe above my bed is lethal and I have hit my head on it countless times, and knowing my luck, the room I move to will have a view of the building site which is down to the left of the photo. For the moment though, I shall enjoy it. 

My house is on the top floor of an old building that I originally thought was a barn, but now I’m not sure. It is one of two buildings at the end of a private road and the garden overlooks the above pictured view even more spectacularly than my window. The only downside, apart from the whole concussion issue, is that my housemates are incredibly loud and last night were singing along to the Mamma Mia soundtrack at 2am. Fun times. 

The city itself is quite nice, although the weather is dragging the whole image down slightly. I imagine in the spring/summer it will be lovely. I would try and compare it to somewhere we know, but it isn’t really too much like anywhere else. I guess Vannes comes close, but even then not hugely. To get into the city, you have to enter one of the medieval gates, which are huge structures that look mightily impressive given that one minute you’re walking through a rather modern looking street and the next it feels like you’re entering a castle. Some are still intact, whereas others are partially ruined. If you live outside city walls, the gate is what determines your area, so mine is called Porta Pispini, as I live just outside, you guessed it, Porta Pispini. I know it’s a rather tricky concept to grasp, but you get used to it after a while, and that’s when you can feel like a true Sienan. (That word may be made up, but it sounds right.)

One thing that I’m not too keen on and which Strasbourg lacks is the sheer volume and steepness of hills in the city. I think the football stadium is the only flat surface in the whole city. This does add a spoonful of medieval charm to the city, however. This, coupled with the distinct lack of sweets in Siena, should result in me returning to England in a state of super fitness and readiness to tackle Widcombe Hill in one swift bound.

Once the weather clears up a little I’ll get some photos, so until then I won’t say much about the city, as it really needs visual representation. 

Although there are no sweets to be found in Siena, pizzas are a whole other kettle of fish. Every other shop seems to sell pizza, and for a very reasonable price too. Most places have a slice of mozzarella for 1€, a very generous slice too. Other places have meal deals, selling a slice of pizza, and a bottle of Coke for 2.50€. Maybe my Widcombe Hill plans won’t go quite as well as first thought…

Anyway, this will have to do for the moment, until I actually get round to doing something productive in some nice weather. So I will sign off now and leave you with a picture of a familiar friend attending the Siena v Lecce game on Sunday, although he was quite upset after Siena lost 2-1 in the end.

There really isn’t much to update you about here at the moment, so I’m going to tell you about anything Strasbourgeois that is noticeably … noticeable.

1. The Great Auchanopoly Mystery

After spending a while trying to decide which supermarket would be my regular; Simply, Atac or Galeries-Gourmandes, I realised that they are all actually owned by Auchan and most of the products instore are the same, with prices only varying between stores in the centre ville and outskirts. The mystery deepened further when I went to baseball practice and saw a very large Auchan hypermarché on the edge of town. I think that Auchan is actually an evil corporation that is trying to take over Strasbourg. Leclerc is the white knight, though, kind of like Will Smith in Independence Day, I am Legend, Men in Black, Men in Black II, Wild Wild West, Hancock, I Robot, Shark’s Tale, Bad Boys and Bad Boys II (damn, that guy saves the world a lot). Our best friend E.Leclerc will wake Strasbourg from its Auchan induced coma.

2 & 3. Une Queue Strasbourgeiose – A Strasbourgish Tail

2. As Fievel Mousekewitz would remind us, there are no cats in America, and the streets are paved with cheese. The same can be said for Strasbourg, nearly. In my month spent here so far, I cannot recall seeing a single cat, not one. There are dogs everywhere you look (Toujours chiens, partout chiens! (Mum and Seb should recognize the quotation I ripped off there)), but I have never seen a cat. I saw one in Luxembourg, but that’s it. Maybe it’s because Strasbourg is a big city and it’s dangerous for cats, but then again there’s more traffic passing through Redon on a market day than you normally get in Strasbourg, so it is a little surprising. (Sorry to disappoint you Holly & Annie, no snacks here). 

3. As for the second part of the Mousekewitz family’s song, the streets are not paved with cheese, or even gold, unfortunately. They are, however, lined with conkers. Everywhere you go in Strasbourg you are walking on conkers and conker shells. I have even been hit on five separate occasions by conkers and shells falling from trees. This whole situation is particularly surprising as there are seemingly not that many horse chestnut trees in the city. 

4. Duck and Cover!

Highly Advanced French Defence Technology

On wednesday I was sitting in my room eating my lunch when all of a sudden I heard what I thought was an air raid siren. Being on the border with Germany, I knew I would be totally screwed in the event of an invasion, so I hoped I was wrong, and carried on with my lunch until it stopped. About five minutes later it started again then stopped after a minute and that was it. Intrigued by this, I looked on google and found an article from the French civil defence website, stating that all attack warning systems across the whole country are tested on the 1st wednesday of every month at midday for 1 minute, before a 5 minute pause, followed by another minute of testing. It was very loud so I guess it was quite close. At least I now know I’ll never be able to oversleep past midday on the first wednesday of the month.

5. Cars? What cars?

Strasbourg is a quite unique city when it comes to getting around. A typical road in the centre ville is divided into 3; 1/3 for cars, 1/3 for trams and 1/3 for pedestrians and bikes. The very centre is actually car free, apart from service vehicles. It makes a refreshing change from places like Paris or even parts of Bath where you can’t move for cars at times. The only downside to this is the sheer volume of bikes in the city. They’re everywhere. Some people even cycle along the tram lines, I’ve seen a few near misses round corners! Pavements are usually quite wide, and split in half for pedestrians and bikes, but cyclists tend to ignore this and you have to be very wary of a bike speeding up behind you and taking you out. To make it worse, the cyclists act like they rule the pavements so if they nearly hit you, they look at you with disgust as if you shouldn’t be walking on the pavement, and they have every right to be cycling in your space. It’s a bit like Oxford, but with fewer Chinese people. 

Crossing the road is also a nightmare, as either French people are colour blind, or just don’t care if the lights are red. We nearly got run over by a huge coach on one corner!

I have to interrupt the post I was writing (which y’all will see soon) to tell an amazing story.

I was walking through town when I saw people standing around with giant balloons, bigger than if you rolled all the dogs into a ball. Not really caring about what they were advertising, something called ‘Rivetoile’, I carried on my merry way to buy some french books to read. On my way back from town I noticed some fountains were…um…founting where there weren’t any before. I then noticed that a building site that Lisa and I walked through two weeks ago had been transformed into this so called ‘Centre Commercial Rivetoile’. I tried to find out something about it, but it has no website or owt like that. I did, however, manage to find a video of it’s opening by a high profile Alsacien politician, the Minister for the Advancement of Tartes Flambées or something, on a french equivalent of Youtube.com, Tutube.com (actually dailymotion.fr, but close enough). It seemed to have all the usual haunts, Sephora, Darty etc.

As all the ministers for Alsacien delicacies rounded a corner, it suddenly hit me like a bright light sent down from heaven…

Need I say more?

UPDATE: Well I went to check it out and it’s everything I could have hoped for and more!

It’s about half the size of our one at home, and a lot smarter. It has all the usual stuff in it, Pulpe, Jeans etc. It’s cheaper than all the other shops in Strasbourg too. While I was looking for all the same stuff we get in Redon, I came across something I really wasn’t expecting to see:

Look familiar? It must have been about 10 years since we had these cereals, but they still have the same design on the packet. They really bring back memories.

As everyone has been to Paris before, there’s not really much describing needs doing.

Sacré Coeur in all its WHITE glory

We started off at Sacré Coeur. We got there at 9am after a really early start and 2.5 hour train journey. After dodging all the black people trying to tie up our fingers and sell us mini Eiffel Towers we stayed there about half an hour before carrying on with our trip. 

That's it? Even Quasimodo would be ashamed of this if he saw Strasbourg's offering

Next up on our magical mystery tour (Lisa had no idea where we were going as she was asleep the previous evening while I planned it (as usual)) was Notre Dame. After seeing Notre Dame in Strasbourg, its Parisian counterpart was about as impressive as placing an IBM Thinkpad next to a Macbook Pro. We did not hang around too long there for this very reason, instead opting to visit the crypt underneath containg ruins dating from Roman to Medieval times. 

After a rather long ride on a very bumpy metro train (even jelly seems rough compared to the Strasbourg trams), we arrived at the Catacombs and proceeded down the neverending tunnels. That’s before you even get the bones. In fact, I think Lisa might still be down there somewhere, not seen her in a while…

WELCOME TO THE EMPIRE OF THE DEAD! pop 6,000,000

 After my experience last time of my newly discovered Vanilla Coke acquiring an ever mustier taste while we were down there, I decided to keep the lid on my Diet Coke this time. Lisa was shouted at for using the flash on her camera, so we had to make do without until we were significantly far enough away, and then the morbid photography could commence. Results are as follows. If you’re too scared, don’t scroll any further. If you’ve already scrolled too far by now and can see the picture below, then you really should know by now that I’m quite likely to put a picture of a skull in my blog if it’s relevant.

This guy could do with a few more "Menu Maxi Best of Le Royal Cheese" burgers (yes, that really is the name of a burger in the local MaccyD)

Once we finally emerged from the tunnels, we hopped on the metro again to make a quick journey to the Trocadero stop. As it happened, this quick journey turned into a very long one, as the train broke down or something and we had to change to a different line and then go back on ourselves several stops, before changing lines again and going another 9 stops. It was important we went to this stop, however, as opposed to all the other stops next to the Eiffel Tower, as with this one you cannot see the tower until you round the corner and all of a sudden it slaps you in the face. Very spectacular indeed. I managed to convince Lisa we were there to see the Palais de Chaillot, so she was a little underwhelmed til we rounded the corner and there it was. After taking lots of photos from all angles of the tower, the palace, the bridge and some dogs, we crossed the bridge and went to queue up for our tickets. 

Either people were walking randomly around the map, or an unbelieveable number of people in Paris are from Corsica

We stopped off first on the 2nd floor and took in all the sights, which were truly spectacualar, before queueing somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes to go up to the 3rd level. The pictures speak for themselves I’m sure. The picture to the right is of a giant map below the tower in the Parc du Champs de Mars, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the EU. People can stand on their country and have their photo taken. The shot was taken from the 2nd floor of the tower.

Arc de Triomphe from 3rd floor. Gotta love that 10x optical zoom

Sacré Coeur from 3rd floor

The zoom wasn't quite good enough to pick out Quasimodo

So that's how far I gotta go in the next few years.

The time was now 4pm and we had been in Paris for 7 hours and had only snacked on a couple of biscuits since breakfast on the train at 7am. Once we got to Charles de Gaulle Etoile metro station we had a quick look at the Arc de Triomphe but then spotted a couple of more appealing arches, the golden ones belonging to Ronald McDonald. One Big Mac meal later and we were ready to hit the road again. We took a greater look at the Arc before heading down the Champs-Elysées to the Place de la Concorde before strolling through the Jardin des Tuileries and to the Louvre.  

It was now 7pm and we only had an hour until our train and as we were so tired we decided to just head back to the station, not knowing how long it would take. In the end it was only 5 minutes but it gave us a chance to grab some food for the train and sit down for a while. And so ended our big day in Paris, fingers crossed there will be another one soon…

After our trips to Germany and Switzerland, our appetities for travel were well and truly whetted, so we decided to head over to Luxembourg, small but sweet. And very, very wet.

We arrived about 9am to torrential rain which we assumed would subside at some point during the day. Boy, were we wrong there! The station was very elegant and had some crazy decoration inside, as most stations around here seem to be. Walking along the Boulevard de Paris (which looked nothing like Paris) we eventually came to a bridge which we later discovered was called the ‘Pont d’Adolphe’. The views were amazing, looking down into a huge valley, very bizarre for the middle of a city.

Pont d'Adolphe

Getting soaked, we headed up to a cafe to get warmed up with a hot chocolate, or ‘chocky’ as the cafe called it. I also had a ‘Schnecke’ for breakfast, a type of pain au raisin, whereas Lisa opted for a ham, gherkin, egg and cheese baguette. After this, we started out on a quest for an umbrella for Lisa, which was seemingly impossible. We found one after about half an hour, but it was €105, so the quest continued. Eventually we found one for €6 and we could continue with our day. Going into the Apple store, I managed to have my first ever quadlingual conversation! In luxembourg they have to be proficient in French, German and Luxembourgish in order to graduate high school, so unsurprisingly, there’s a less than 50% graduation rate! They also learn English there throughout their schooling so speaking to people there is easy, yet very confusing when all 4 are spoken in one conversation. 

After wandering around the city a while, we came across the cathedral, which is nothing special from the outside, but very nice and quite modern inside. There was a corner dedicated to 9/11, with an American flag and an A3 poster of the World Trade Center, which was a bit bizarre. They really seem to love USA in Luxembourg, every bookshop and newsagent had books and magazines about the elections filling their windows. 

Oh say can you see...

One Pizza Hut later (including a half hour wait for our bill) and we were ready to head back out and see what else Luxembourg had to offer. Because of the weather, we decided to do indoor activities. After reading our guidebook we found out about the ‘Casemates’ (pronounced kazza-mats), a series of tunnels under the city used for protection in the olden days and linked to the old castle which was removed after an alliance with someone or other. It was very interesting, and nice and dry, even if the roof was really low and we had to climb 400 stairs. One particularly cool bit was a gate in the river than ran through the bottom of the valley that was intended to be closed in the case of the enemy getting in, flooding the whole valley. It was a huge valley, though, and given the size of the river, that plan would never have worked. It sounds like the kind of plan Homer Simpson might have. 

The complete arsenal of the Luxembourg army

On leaving the Casemates, it was still chucking it down and, after getting some new batteries for our cameras, we decided to get one of those CIty Sightseeing Tour buses, exactly the same as the Bath and Oxford ones, even the same logo. I normally scoff at people using those, but it was so wet and we still had so much to see in so little time, so we went for it. An hour later, and freezing cold, the bus stopped at the station, after trawling through an endless maze of banking districts and we decided to cut our losses and just head home.

We had to change at Metz and, given our already soaked state, decided we’d have a look around despite the persistent rain. It proved to be a very worthwhile trip. The city is beautiful, with a mix of Roman, medieval and gothic architecture. As in Strasbourg, they take great care of their city and its appearance, with lovely gardens and interesting statues all around. It was hard to notice the rain, we were so taken with the place.

Much of the city looks like this

We only had two hours until our train so we headed straight for the cathedral, which we figured was the city centre. We found the cathedral quite easily and had a bit of a look round before turning back. We happened upon a couple of Breton restaurants, as well as a Flunch on our way back to the station. We actually arrived back at the station with about 50 minutes to spare, but as we were so wet and weren’t sure of the way back at first so wanted to play it safe, we decided to just wait it out in the station with a baguette. 

A typical doorway in a dodgy alleyway

A very striking thing about the city is how ornate everything is. Nearly every house had doorways similar to the one depicted, even the really scuzzy, horrible ones, with hobos sniffing glue in them. It’s very strange. I think it was quite a small,  yet affluent city until quite recently and expanded rapidly.

After a long and soggy day we finally got back to Strasbourg, ready to embrace a lazy Sunday that we hoped might bring better weather.

I'm not fat, I'm big boned

This place was so cool, I decided it needed an article all to itself. After a hot morning of wandering around Basel, we had to choose between going to Zurich for the afternoon or “Zolli”, Basel Zoo. After discovering that it would cost €80 to get to Zurich, we plumped with the zoo. One free tram ride later, we reached the entrance to find it cost 12 CHF each to get in, about £6! Student prices nearly everywhere we’ve been so far in Europe are significantly cheaper than their British counterparts. Upon entry it seemed like the price was a pretty fair one, as it was very plain, basic and grey, especially when compared with London Zoo. The first thing you see when you go in is an enclosure housing goats. Hardly exotic. But after seeing some penguins and a breed of rhino I’ve never seen before, things were looking up.

After going through a tunnel, we emerged into the main part of the zoo, and could already see giraffes poking over the top, as well as a sea lion pool. It started raining lightly, but it did not dampen our enjoyment (ay-oh!). After watching the sea lions for a while we went inside to a room where you can see lions and alligators. All were being quite lazy, but one gator was hanging around just near the window and you could see every single detail. It was quite scary!

Grrrr......Arrrgh!

After seeing most of the other animals in the park, and getting swizzed at the expensive restaurant, we headed back to the seal pool to see feeding time. It was a great sight, with one huge, Big Daddy seal getting most of the attention and most of the fish! After meal time was over, they all went inside to lie down I guess, a bit like Coo after his dinner, so we went to explore the last bit of the park we hadn’t seen yet.

I'm smarter than the average bear, Boo-Boo!

Possibly the coolest animals there was a pair of bears. Having never seen a bear before, and knowing I’ll be having to fight them off everyday when I live in Canada one day, it was really amazing to see them. They were only small, and looked very cute, but had huge claws and teeth and could probably crush me with their noses alone!

Other animals I’d never seen before included kangaroos and hyenas. There were supposed to be wolves there but, as in Branferé, they were nowhere to be seen during the daylight. Don’t they realise people had paid good money to see them? Inconsiderate hounds!

Check back later when I put up a gallery of more photos from the trip so far, as well as recounting our excellent adventures in Luxembourg and the Foire Européenne, some kinda European produce fair or something that we’re gonna go to today!

Welcome back. After the toil of walking up the cathedral tower adn its seemingly endless spiral stairs, we decided to have a more relaxing day on Wednesday. We started off by going to my faculty building, Institute d’Etudes Politiques, to hand in my registration forms. One hour, lots more walking to find a photo booth for yet more passport photos, and lots of pointless bureauocracy later we finished that task and headed into town to get the tram to the Parc de l’Orangerie. We’ve since realised that it’s actually quite close to my accommodation and will walk there in future. Strasbourg is a very deceptive city like that. You can walk for hours to get to somewhere you thought was really close, or take a tram somewhere only to notice it’s just round the corner from your house.

Oh well, on with the day. 

In the park, we had lunch on a bench next to the lake pictured in my last post. We then went to the petting farm in the park. At €1.50, we weren’t expecting much out of it but it was worse than that. There were lots of animals in tiny pens. Horses trying to open the gates with their paws, rather thin looking donkeys licking their bars to try and get some kind of nourishment, doves cooped up in a tiny cage with chickens. Needless to say we didn’t hang around for very long.

Thursday saw more adventurous exploring than going to a park for the second time in 3 days. We got up early to get a train to Basel before 8am. First things first, the trains are much nicer than the horrible First Great Western or more tolerable SouthWest Trains vehicles. There are comfy seats, legroom and a distinct lack of chavs playing crap RnB from their mobile phones! We arrived before 10am to a lovely sunny and blue day in Switzerland.  

There’s not a great deal in Basel, we found out, but it was a very pleasant city, and typically Swiss in terms in cleanliness and smartness. After walking through town for a while and mistaking what is actually a very small church for the cathedral, we stumbled upon the Marktplatz, which hosts this crazy building, which we soon found out was the Rathaus, the city hall.

Inside it was even more amazing. The picture does not do it justice, squashed between all the other grey buildings in the market square. Possibly the most bizarre thing of all was that people were able to wander through any part of it, including past people’s offices and staff rooms, very freely. Behind this building was a blue one, that almost looked like a house, but it turns out is actually the city court. Very humble and quite surreal.

The best feature of the city, however, has to be the fountains everywhere. On every street corner there seemed to be another one, all very old and ornate or new and stylish. When we passed a group of German tourists, I heard the tour guide say that you can drink from any fountain in the city, all of them are safe. You can never go thirsty in Basel. She seemed very proud of this, as everyone in the city seemed to be. It truly was a refreshing change (ba-zing) from almost everywhere else, especially Haut Tesdan, where we couldn’t drink the water in our own house for a while!

Friday was another quite uneventful day, necessary to recover from the long day in Switzerland. The most interesting part was going into town to buy a new belt. After deciding against one in Printemps that cost €149, I got one from Intersport instead. After buying our train tickets to Luxembourg, we got an early night to prepare for our oily stoat the next day to get a 07.07 train to the smallest of the Benelux brothers.

And that was the end of the first week of my ERASventure. On with the rest of the year!