Paris, je t'aime

Alright folks, it's time for an update. I got myself out of Switzerland and into Paris yesterday. For some reason I feel like most of the comments about paris aren't very positive. So I was expecting dirty streets with dog/human poop everywhere on the sidewalks. But what a pleasant surprise! Very little human and dog poop to avoid!

My hostel for the time being is in the city core right around l'Hotel de Ville. I went for a short walk the day i arrived, and in front of HdV was some fountains, a massive carousel... along with a skating rink packed with people in it. Safe to say it left a pretty awesome impression of the city.

The whole core is absolutely beautiful, the buildings have immaculate exteriors that just scream "Paris!". It's almost as if you took the old port from Montreal, widened the streets and ctrl+v'ed it a hundred times over the city. Very picturesque. The city regulations prevent residents from hanging things outside their windows and balconies to protect the image of the city, they also regulate the maximum height of buildings. This results in a pretty uncommon cityscape where almost everything is of the same height.

As a side note, old european cities are impossible to navigate, theres no grid overlay here at all, you could take 2 rights and end up back where you were. Nothing is consistent! "sense of direction" is absolutely USELESS now. This even translates into their metro system. New yorks looks complicated but is easy to figure out, tokyo has seperate rail and metro lines and is in a FOREIGN LANGUAGE but you can figure it out easily. However, looking at paris' metro map is asking for a brain hemmorage, it feels like they just blindly tunneled wherever they wanted to go and then put a bunch of rails down and proclaimed "voila! metro."

I'm so happy to be in a city that offers real food at decent prices. Switzerland is for rich people that wear rolexes and drive R8s. It's also mostly for german's who primary diet consists of sausages of varying colours and beer. Paris is a more for me. I like food. I like paris.

Perplexing discovery

Two posts in a row! Whilst doing my business in the bathroom, I realized something about the toilet bothered me. No it wasn't the odd panels on the wall that you have to push to flush, I've already been accustomed to bizzare manners of flushing. What perplexed me was the missing "water housing" part which we're all used to, this makes me wonder: when a toilet doesnt flush properly here, what do they do to fix it?

It looks awkward as hell too without that extra tub doesnt it?

I loveeeeeee cold winters

Back by popular demand (jun and milton... cough)!

Let me start this off by saying the first person i met in Lausanne was an asshole. Overall the swiss are very nice, although I think theres something pervasive about reclusivness and the french language culture. Anyways, the asshole is my dorm concierge, he's a stubborn arrogant twat of a frenchman that refused to answer questions and spoke to me as if i had a lobotomy at some point in my life. Infuriating asshat.

Anyways, back to my original post.

Many of us from cold climates have a deep seated dread of winter. For us it means bone-chilling temperatures, layers upon layers of clothing (except for you canada goose people), short daylight hours and various other irritating winter precautions that must be taken. Naturally, when we hear about Vancouver and their mild winters we think about how great it would be if it were like that. Lausanne experiences a similar kind of winter.

You might be thinking "Thats great! you must be loving it!", but I'm writing to tell you that you're completely wrong. I have a newfound distaste for mild winters as well as a new love for freezing winters (I'd still prefer to have no winter at all, but if I had to choose, i'd choose the f*cking cold one). To put it briefly, the mildness of the weather makes it humid, and humidity in winter results in tons of fog. Theres supposed to be a majestic view of the alps from my dorm room window, but I've only managed to see a few buildings away due to the fog. Not only that, but mild winters means theres no snow on the ground. I know most of us hate having to walk through the snow/slush in the winter months back home. But the snow brings another great quality to winters: light in darkness. After the sun sets, the streetlights & moonlight shine on the snow and it reflects everywhere, winter nights are bright to the point where you could read outdoors (only someone truly stupid would). This isn't the case here, not only is there no snow to reflect light, the fog gets trapped in the narrow european streets and prevents any real sunshine from getting through. We're used to getting intense sunshine on cold winter days in Montreal, I still haven't seen the sun here yet. I'm pretty sure they don't load up their milk with vitamin D either, so the lack of sunlight is really getting to me.

[edit] Admittedly, snow on the ground really wouldnt work in a place like this either cause of how the streets are organized and how narrow they are. In fact, snow would make navigation here impossible by my guess. [/edit]

Oh, almost forgot, our underground city back home is the bomb. All cities that experience winter should have one, its so convenient to hide from the cold AND get around.

Anyways, the experience out here in europe has not been what I was expecting, and the realization of the facts of life on exchange have sunk in. I have a more thoughtful post coming in the next few days once I'm in Paris, but I thought i'd bless you guys with one of my wonderful rants.

Bureaucracies

Does it really need to take 3 months to have a student visa application approved? Come on. Give me my damn entry ticket already.

La la la la la. Ra ra ou la la...

Less than 3 months

Less than 3 months to go until my exchange program begins. Quite exciting. I promise not to put myself in any danger (probably no running with bulls, but i definitely want to see the festival).

Glaciers!

Met Jen and Kristin from Maine today on the glacier hike. They're
traveling for the weekend only and are headed back soon. The glacier
hike is absolutely unreal, the ice under your feet is a mystic shade
of blue that perpetuates forever underneath you. Walking along ridges
you can see where some of the melt forms rivers and archs. On this day
there was a consistently strong wind that forced us to double back on
our tracks multiple times for fear of being blown into a crevasse. The
only way to tell the deepness of one is by chucking a block of ice in
and listening for the crashing to cease. Near the end we found an
icewall to scale, so with pick axes in hand we climbed (or attempted
to) one at a time. It's probably one of the most exhaustive activities
I've ever done.

Almost all the terrain we drove by today was barren. Not a single tree
or shrub in sight. There were rocks and volcanic ash everywhere and it
really felt like an anolog of mars. Opposite to the mountains is flat
land that extends to the Atlantic, occasionally dusted with some moss.
Iceland truly is unique in terms of landscape.

Suhan (mobile)

Impressions of Iceland

66 degrees north. You really don't realize just how far north this is
until you see how low the midday sun hangs in the sky. Admittedly,
it's not so bad considering we're a month away from equinox, but it
still feels odd seeing darkness at 9:30am.

Let's back pedal a bit because I just want to comment on how nice of a
city Boston is. I was only in the city center for an hour or two but
the place feels clean and friendly. Buildings are packed next to
eachother in the downtown core giving a slight resemblance to how
European cities feel. Apart from that, the architecture is really
stunning. Those art deco(?) styled facades are rich in detail and give
off an aura of timelessness that modern buildings lack.

The flight from Boston to reyjkavik was an overnighter on which I
really hoped to see the northern lights. Aurora activity has been at a
peak the past few weeks but to my dismay none appeared in the sky on
the way over. I'm crossing my fingers for a string of cloudless nights
here, I'd trade the rest of my trip just for a glimpse of those
magical lights.

You're all probably wondering what there is to do and see in Iceland.
Well let me tell you, this young island is a hiker's delight in the
summer time and has equal visual appeaL in the winter months. It's
recent geologic volcanic activity means there are geysirs left right
and centre. There are also glaciers that cover large swaths of land on
which you can hike and climb. Also, there's some pretty majestic
iceberg fields outside of the city that are worth a visit. Finally,
let's not forget the famous Blue Lagoon spa which is home to a scenic
and huge aqua blue silica thermal pool.

So far, I've only gone to see Gullfoss, a waterfall, and the geysirs,
of which I took an fun sequence of photos. Tomorrow I'm going to go
glacier hiking and then (attempt) to climb an ice wall. And then the
day after I'm going to go scuba diving (yes you read that right)
between the American and European continental plates. Visibility in
that water is supposed to be over 50m so I'll be taking lots of
pictures of that!

Anyways, I'll update again in a day or two!
PS. It's around the same temp as Montreal here, except. The wind can
have a nasty bite.