Update - June

The season of travel seems to have taken me sort of by surprise, so I haven’t been updating my blog as well as I probably should have. I finally bought a decent digital camera, though, so I should be putting up some more pictures soon. My sister has a fantastic camera, which she used when she visited me for a week. We ate so much cheese that week that I hardly feel like touching the stuff now! And I live in France! After my sister visited I went to the US for a week, which was pretty relaxing, except for having my former Ph.D. advisor suggest that I become a high school teacher. Not only is it not what I’m interested in, but I’d have to go back to school to get my certification! Ugh, depressing.

On a brighter note, my dad is visiting me for a week, and it seems like he is really getting a feeling of Paris life. I found a tiny hotel for him, for 35 euros per night, not far from where I live. The room doesn’t have a toilet, but it does have a shower, and for any cheaper you’d probably have to go to a youth hostel. It’s close to bus and metro, on the southern edge of Paris. In case anybody is interested, it’s Hotel Montsouris-Orleans, 35 rue Beaunier, 75014. Tomorrow, my dad starts a self-guided trip to Italy for a couple weeks, and then he is going to Copenhagen to join an Elderhostel tour of Scandinavia. Altogether, he’s rambling around Europe for six weeks (he started out in Amsterdam). I’m so impressed by his sense of adventure – he doesn’t plan on finding a hotel in Rome until he gets there!

Myself, I took a trip to Barcelona in April. It was fantastic. The most impressive two things were the architecture by Gaudi and the pride of the Catalan people. In a close third is the impressively late dinners of the Spanish people. We never started before 10 or finished before midnight! Here is a picture from the roof of the Gaudi building called La Pedrera, with his unfinished Sagrada Familia Cathedral in the background.

I made a trip to Barcelona for a three-day weekend, which was great! There is a lot of stunning modern architecture and also quite historic buildings. There is a monument to Christopher Columbus and a plaque in the cathedral by the baptismal font where the native Americans he broght back with him were baptised. The pictures below are from my trip.

The Placa Catalunya, a huge square in the center of Barcelona, bordered by shopping centers and a bank building, located at the head of Las Ramblas, which used to be a canal but is now the main pedestrian mall.


On Las Ramblas you have a lot of tourists, so there are plenty of people trying to make a buck. Some get pretty creative and attract the attention of television cameras. This guy was giving an interview in horse-neighs. On the right, you can just see Che Guevara looking on.


La Pedrera, a Gaudi masterpiece



It is said that if you drink from this fountain on Las Ramblas, you are fated to return to Barcelona. I hope so!

Manifest avec nous à douze heures et demi...

Today was the second Tuesday in a row that unions around the country 'united' in striking to protest the CPE. This strike was a lot lighter than the previous one. Arriving at my school this morning, I passed were a couple young people standing at the school gate handing out flyers and inviting people to join them in demonstrating (manifester) today. In fact, the students at the engineering school I go to are lucky that they can still attend classes and do their work, because a number of other universities are still blocked by protesters. The situation is giving rise to regularly held anti-strike demonstrations, which are much smaller but resonate pretty strongly with the opinions of the students I work with. My first reponse to the demonstrations by the students was that it was great that the French feel empowered to take action when the government does something they don't like. And then, with the length of time of the strikes and their growing intensity, I thought it was amazing that they were so stubborn and amazing also that the government didn't step in and require the schools to reopen during some negotiation. But now, it seems like it was too late to stop the law and that the demonstrations mainly affected the political landscape for the coming presidential elections. I hate to think that all of this time and energy was spent for campaign posturing.