I’m up at 5:00am writing these lines due to a wonderful jet-lag. I have been back in Ottawa for a whole day now and the desire of being a couch potato is creeping back. Also, I’m very sorry that I didn’t write a post before I left Germany as promised. It’s terrible that I have trouble keeping promises, my sincere apologies!

My last week in Jülich has been very eventful. On Wednesday, I proudly presented my work on the influence of biochar (a type of black carbon) on the biodegradation of atrazine in soils to an audience of a dozen researchers and got very good feedback from them. I think the fact that I was genuinely interested in the overall purpose of my research really helped me in delivering something good. Following the discussions of the results, I had a weird epiphany. I suddenly proud of being working in science, seeing everyone exchanging ideas and brainstorming together, once in a while adding my own views and thinking of in what ways the study could be improved. It was a very nice and supportive environment and I thought that perhaps not all is lost for me in science after all.

On Friday, the supervisor of our lab group invited us to his house for dinner to celebrate the end of my work term in Germany and also that of another Ph.D. student who will be returning to Brazil. It was quite an honour to be invited into a real German home for dinner. The hosts were so hospitable and attentive, and it felt great to give these three months in the country some kind of closure. I feel like the Germans are very good hosts; all evening, our supervisor and his wife were running around serving the guests food and pouring drinks for everyone, while the rest of us had our butts glued to our seats and chatted away.

Looking back, I learned a lot during this stunt of half a year in Europe. I was at a roadblock in terms of knowing what I really wanted to do with my life and I am so glad that I got the break I needed to “figure it out”, sort of. For one, I’m not too crazy about working in research in the future, but I am so glad that I was chosen for this DAAD internship in environmental chemistry because it made me realize how passionate I am about this issue and that I still want to work in the environment sector. As for where I want to live in the future, it would be easy to say: “I want to return to Germany!” because it is such a beautiful and functional place with the most disciplined and self-correcting people that I have ever known, but I think it’s important not to confuse feelings about a place and the feelings with a place. The difficulty is to piece together all the feelings you want, for some it would be success and sense of accomplishment, for others comfort in a nurturing home although there doesn’t have be a contradiction… The point is, once you know what you want and don’t want, you’ll be on the right path towards something great no matter where you are or what you do.

I have discovered that writing should remain a hobby of mine and that I will keep on writing about my development, both in a personal journal and online. The bloggers on this blog all write so well, all of them with different styles and that really inspires me to get better by reading more, writing more, exploring new styles and becoming more conscious of the power of words. Also, I loved the challenge of writing for this blog. I can’t speak for others but it was indeed challenging for me because I tend to poison my writing with the question: “what do people want to read about?” which produced many mental blocks, although it was always at the back of my mind that people really don’t care if you ask yourself that question so it is always better to write with heart, simply.

Today I will be returning to Montreal to hunt for an apartment for my last undergraduate year in university, somewhere close to school, just in case I become fully anti-social as this school year looks pretty tough. Just last night, I discovered the comedic videos of Jon Lajoie on Youtube, most of which were filmed in Montreal during the winter, and that made me strangely nostalgic. It was strange because Montreal winters are not particularly inviting and one of the reasons I wanted to leave it for France in the first place.

Right after I departed from Paris and met up with a friend from Canada who was traveling in Europe, she commented that I spoke English with a HUGE French accent. Somehow, I fully invite that happening again and hope that I will always carry a little piece of this experience in Germany with me, but I mustn’t worry about that as it is inevitable. Thanks for reading, it had been a pleasure sharing my world with you and I would be very glad to help if you have any questions about studying abroad, working in Germany, traveling around, “figuring it out” or anything else that might be important to you.

Love and peace,

Fanyi

Dear all,

This week is announcing to be quite hectic as my internship at the Forschungszentrum Jülich comes to an end and I need to prepare a formal report and a PowerPoint presentation to give to a big lab group on Wednesday. I feel quite silly because initially, I think my Ph.D. student only expected me to prepare a presentation but I stupidly asked if he would like a report to go with it too. I just finished making a 14-point check list for this week such as packing, cleaning up the apartment, closing the bank account, finishing all the academic things such as the work report and presentation, buying souvenirs for family and friends I have been out of touch with since coming to Europe (“No, I didn’t forget about you. Here’s a keychain”), and somehow feel ready to leave by Saturday.

I will be leaving from Düsseldorf International Airport this Sunday at 7:20 am, transferring in Iceland and Boston before arriving in Ottawa, which means that I probably will need to camp at the Düsseldorf airport on Saturday night. At the moment, I am starting to get a little worried about how I am going to haul my two monstrous luggage bags from Jülich to Düsseldorf. I’ve accumulated a large number of useless objects and memorabilia that I can’t throw away during the past 7 months in Europe so at the moment, the arduous road home seems rather unappealing.

On another note, for my last full weekend in Europe, I visited the city of Munich and dreamy castle of Neuschwanstein on the German-Austrian border! I also visited Dachau to see what is left/what was reconstructed of the concentration camp there. It was depressing no doubt and a few people I’ve talked to warned me against going there, but Dachau was the first erected concentration camp during the Third Reich and set the example for a slew of others – this part of history is so dark but yet so recent and real that it would be just irresponsible to shy away from it. That morning was cloudless and incredibly sunny so the contrast was very strange. I feel very privileged to have had such a grand ending to my experience in Germany. This is all that I will say about the Munich weekend for now, or else I will keep going forever and leave my work report and presentation on the back burner for too long. I leave you with a promise to write a more detailed post about my Munich trip later, before I jump into the time machine (or plane, but I really see it as a time machine – I have no idea what lies ahead over there anymore!), back to North America!

Yesterday night, I returned from an exhausting day in Cologne. I finally climbed the 500 something steps to the Bell tower of the Dom and then just hung out in the city for a while. That trek up the Bell tower was truly infernal – the stairs went on and on and on and I saw stars when I came out of it! This was indeed on a weekday but since my PhD student is out of town this week and I’ve finished all the necessary work for the day, I took a dear friend who is travelling around Europe on a tour of the city of Cologne. In fact, he showed up completely unannounced on Monday, luggage in tow and all. I was so surprised! Jülich is a village so small that I simply accepted the fact that my address, along with perhaps my existence, has completely disappeared among the queues of forests and fields rolling on for infinity and beyond and no one will ever be able to find their way here.

By now, I am seriously charmed by my relaxing life in Jülich and very happy with the closely-knit international community here, but I still tend to advise friends and family against coming here for the sake of experiencing Germany. I really wouldn’t know what to do to keep my guests entertained except maybe rushing them to Cologne and Bonn.

About this “international community”, there is a group of people working at the Forchungszentrum comprising of Germans, Italians, Spanish, Indians, Iranians, Brazilians etc. that quite often gather to socialize. On every Tuesday night, a small subgroup would gather to have a music jamming/practice session on voice, guitar, and bass. I have been humming tunes under my breath and dreaming about touching an instrument again for close to half a year now so it was a completely liberating experience to watch them play and to sing along to rock songs that used to play on the radio. Perhaps next week, we’ll go on to more soulful tunes like Save Room by John Legend and maybe I’ll even get to brush up my skills on the guitar!

Last weekend’s travel destination was, drum roll, Berlin! Yes it is still a big deal even after every other RISE blogger has gone there and already written about it. Now the collection will be finally complete. Berlin has something for everybody, so you really have to experience it for yourself. For me, Berlin’s like a free-thinking wild child who dabbled into everything imaginable during its youth, then sobered up during adulthood and later made something out of itself and its crazy experiences. Graffiti ran on walls like rebellious tattoos… I saw run-down and once abandoned buildings in the middle downtown now housing the works of young artists with no budget… I loved it! Sadly, I don’t think I will be visiting another city like that soon.

Over the course of the weekend, we visited the Jüdisches Museum and the Pergamon Museum. The museums in Berlin were organized in such a way that it is very easy to retain information from the exhibitions. The Jewish museum gave a very comprehensive and interactive survey of Jewish lifestyle and religion, didn’t bog down too much on the years of the Holocaust but gave a clear timeline of why and how the Jewish people have been persecuted over the centuries. The Pergamon is probably the second most astonishing and beautiful museum I have seen in my life, following closely the Vatican Museum in Vatican City. Entire buildings from ancient Babylon (modern day Iraq) were excavated, transported and reconstructed piece by piece to Berlin in the early 1900s. It is just a bit sad that these treasures aren’t exhibited in the countries that once owned them.

Before coming to Germany, I remember asking a friend in RISE if it was a sensitive topic to talk about the Second World War with a German. I have never tried it and perhaps it will be a little bit awkward (mainly for me), but at least now I know that Germany fully acknowledges this dark period of her history and tries very hard in making sure that the memories of the victims of the Third Reich are respected and immortalized. Monuments, museums, various historical sites all over the city recall the turbulent century. I admire it a lot that Germans aren’t trying to sweep the past under the carpet and wait for people to forget, like what is currently being done in many parts of the world.

We visited the Holocaust memorial on the afternoon of our first day (I would have easily stayed 3 hours there listening to the audio guide), became mesmerized by the Topography for Terror, visited Checkpoint Charlie and went up the Berliner Dom on our second. On the third day, I woke up early to beat the crowd at the Reichtag, took the U-Bahn somewhere close to the Ostbahnhof to see the East Side Gallery and then walked back to Museum island to meet up with Jake and Claudia who are doing their internships in Berlin and Alex from my institute at 11am. Gulp.

On Sunday afternoon, I left Berlin happy but still feeling as if I missed out on some things. Maybe this list will be some help to people who want to travel to Berlin in the future.

1. Berlin was a new travel lesson for me. On short visits of cities that are famous for their landmarks and history, it’s an excellent idea to embark on a walking tour sometime within the first few days. Then, use the time left to return to the spots that really made an impact on you. I think that would have rendered my stay in Berlin much more complete in the sense that I would have managed time more efficiently and learned more.

2. Not having gone clubbing. My guide book suggested a place called Sage with 4 floors, a variety of different music, and a rooftop pool. I secretly wanted to find out what it was about but then put that thought behind me because it’s always such a heavy undertaking to go clubbing. Now I’ll never get to go to a club with a rooftop pool! (How cool is that?) This leads me to my next point…

3. Not following the suggestions given by the guidebook! We decided to bar-hop instead after getting out of some metro station in Mitte. First, a small group of friends and I entered a place with windows tinted black with barely a soul within 50 meters – a friend humorously nicknamed it the “hell of Berlin”. The next one was an interesting indie bar, or bar with odd decorations, girls in secretary-style clothes wearing flashy red lipstick and geeky boys in converse. The night was fun nevertheless (It’s Berin! I didn’t expect any less), but I think unless you have a lot of time in one city, it’s always good to foolproof your plans for the night by discovering places that people have recommended instead of feeling adventurous and spending your only night in Berlin in an unimpressive joint with terrible music.

4. Last, I regret not visiting Potsdamer Platz and the Sony Center at night. I heard that the modern architecture combined with blinding lights and my love for sci-fi hubs would make for quite an experience. I will be haunted by your pictures until we meet again, Berlin!

Today, I had lunch with a Nobel Prize winner. His name is Peter Grünberg and he is one of the Nobel Prize recipients for Physics in 2007. Yes, Nobel Prize winners are humans just like the rest of us but you can’t deny that it’s a bit awesome. Dr. Grünberg, along with Albert Fert of Université Paris-Sud in France, discovered giant magnetoresistance, a phenomenon that basically allowed the jump from gigabytes to terabytes in hard-drives and changed modern computer technology forever. I knew that a past Nobel Prize winner worked at the Forchungszentrum Jülich, as it was clearly advertised on banners lining the entrance to the research compound, but it would never have occurred to me in a million years that I would in fact meet him and under such informal circumstances. An acquaintance within our group used to work for Dr.Grünberg and invited him to dine with us. And just like that, I had the honour of eating a pineapple chicken with rice beside someone who revolutionized the computer industry. We chatted a little bit about Canada and I found out that he did his post-doc at Carleton University in Ottawa – my city!  Perhaps my fate in the world of academia will be changed forever from being in such proximity of a brilliant mind.

This weekend’s travel destinations turned out to be Bruges, Brussels and Gent in Belgium. The initial plans to go to Hamburg fell apart, like they always do, and so I decided organize a weekend somewhere cheap and easy to access. Searching on the Deutsche Bahn website, I found a one-way ticket from Aachen to Bruges for only 19EUR, and that’s how the Deutsche Bahn made my travel choices for me. As for the return, I booked a ticket on a Eurolines bus route from Gent to Aachen for only 14EUR. These are the best transportation deals that I have gotten ever since I set foot on this continent! Using Eurolines is indeed a great option to travel if train tickets get too expensive. However, the journey is greatly lengthened and the bus stop is most likely going to be situated in the middle of nowhere. So, as a small army of RISE interns headed towards Amsterdam (I would have loved to join them if the hostels weren’t as pricey), a friend and I set forth towards the beautiful town of Bruges, or what everyone calls “Venice of the North.”

We arrived at our hostel at around 12:30am, inconveniently located at the opposite end of town from the train station. Actually, it wasn’t terrible at all since it takes only about 30 to 40 minutes to cross Bruges by foot and the town is quite a gem to look at in the evening. Serene canals run along against the main roads, not quite as many as those seen in Venice or Amsterdam but these ones have swans! I felt a wave peacefulness overcome me at sight of swans sleeping, particularly deep in the night when nobody’s watching, floating as light as a single feather and not minding the current. On a random note, this reminded me of some words spoken by a friend who was once very into meditation: the ripples and waves will come and go, but a river remains a river. Same with people; problems will rise and fall, but you can’t be anything but yourself so you might as well forget about the impermanent stuff.

The free maps we received at the hostel were created for young people, by young people. One thing that immediately became obvious from these maps was that this particular local crowd didn’t like tourists that much and weren’t afraid to say it. Their cynical sense of humour was pretty amusing. It was mentioned that bicycles rule in Bruges and they even suggested renting a bike to ‘run over tourists’. (Side note: this was something that I got to experience first-hand. Perhaps looking like a tourist is really a trait that I can’t escape, particularly in Europe, ie: I’m Asian and own a camera.) Included was also a list of questions to piss off the locals:

· Oooh, I know this tower! It was built for the movie ‘In Bruges’, wasn’t it?

· When does Bruges close? And the classic:

· Where is McDonald’s?

Saturday morning, we got directed to a butcher shop that sells pancakes for 4.90EUR the kilo. It was weird to see the pancakes placed among rows upon rows of meat. This apparent contradiction was reconciled when my friend found a piece of solid pork fat inside the pancake… The rest of the day was spent in a touristy daze. We then went on a brewery tour at Den Halves Man and got a ‘free’ beer when we came back out, window-shopped along streets packed with souvenir stores, cartoon dens, and saw the Madonna and child by Michelangelo, which is a big deal since rarely are Michelangelo’s works seen outside of Italy. The best part of Bruges is to me, the churches. I discovered my favourite church of probably the world in Bruges. The exterior had nothing special – grey stone walls and such – but the grandeur of the interior shocked me. The space felt open, fresh and was glowing in natural sunlight.  Even though I’m a non-believer, I think that if there is a single way to showcase the true glory of God, this church’s got it.  The next church that awed me took a modern art approach. That is, empty frames hanging from the ceiling, a giant pool of water in the center, and a smoke-machine.  Too awesome. 

Late in the afternoon, we took a train to Brussels with a 13.30EUR return trip ticket. Yes there was still enough time to visit a capital city, we thought. We got to the Central train station at around 5pm and headed straight towards the main attractions : The Grand’ Place and the Mannekin Pis (famous little kid taking a leak). Actually, there is also a Jannekin Pis in Brussels (girl version), beside the Delirium bar, which holds the 2006 world record for the most variety of beers. Somehow, the statue of a little girl peeing just seems vulgar. We had dinner near the Grand’ Place, on a touristy street lined with vendors fighting for the attention of tourists and shouting salutations in Chinese or Japanese or wherever they figure we’re from. Tip for travellers in Brussels: something to keep in mind that the restaurant owners are willing to compromise if you’re not willing to pay the price on the menu, unless I’m totally wrong. Before sitting down and showing your interest in a particular restaurant, drop in a casual comment about the other neighbouring restaurants selling for less and usually they will match the price. Some restaurant owners even asks you how much you’re willing to pay. Fascinating!

After slurping down a delicious pot of moules et frites, we continued to stroll around downtown and finally winded up in an unpretentious little coffee shop called “Greenwich”. That was the hightlight of my day, sitting on old wooden stools in quiet thought, with my entire mind focused on a game of chess. I simply loved it. There was something magical about that place, with its antique feel, an old bar that you’d swear no one ever frequents and one lone bartender standing behind. A group of locals decides to gather in a back-corner thickened with tobacco smoke, a world away from the trendy youngsters sitting next door in overexposed Asian-fusion restaurants. The experience would have been complete if I had a cigarette on me. Then I remembered that I don’t smoke…

That’s it for today’s post!  Hope you enjoyed it.  Until next time!

My general plan for this weekend was to travel to Cologne alone on Saturday and visit some touristy places, to stay in a youth hostel for the night and then to travel to Düsseldorf on Saturday morning to meet up with other RISE interns in the area. I did some research on the city of Cologne prior to departure and both the Ludwig Museums (modern art) and the NS Dokumentationszentrum (old Gestapo prison) received good reviews on the internet. The latter was said to be much underrated. After getting to Cologne in the morning, I walked across the Hohenzollernbrücke, the bridge reserved for train traffic that links the two shores of the Rhein. There were hundreds, if not thousands of padlocks of love attached to the railings, and I can only assume that couples would throw the keys into the turbulent waters of the Rhein after declaring eternal affection towards each other. After, I stayed a couple of hours in the Ludwig museum. Modern art is very boring to look at if you’re not the one creating it. What I think happens before a piece of art is created is that at first, there is the symptom that the artist wants to say too much, then gets lost in his/her train of thought and ends up scribbling over everything. The Ludwig museum has a large Picasso collection which I enjoyed and I also found a stunning painting by Dalí, by far my favourite painter in the world. Each time, I am stunned not by the oddness of his themes but the precision of his paintbrush strokes.

The old Gestapo prison was very interesting, although I arrived 30 minutes before closing time and it was of course too late to get an audio-guide. There were prison cells in the basement, tiny rooms that were fully-furnished with a cold stone bench and white walls that must have left the prisoners feelings hopeless and very claustrophobic. In some, there were still pencil markings of calendars, evidence of the prisoners counting down the lengthy days. I highly recommend that museum to everyone who plans on visiting Cologne (though you should arrive early enough to get an audio-guide since most descriptions are in German). Although I made the arrangements for a hostel in Cologne on Saturday night, I decided to cancel my reservation and take the train back home as it merely takes one hour to get back to Jülich. Truthfully, I was very bored by the end of the day. Too much of “traveling alone” happens in your head.

The next morning, after some debating, I decided to brave the torrential downpour and head over to Düsseldorf anyway. It was a very good decision in the end because even though the weather report was announcing rain for the entire day, it was in fact mostly sunny. Always give the weatherman the benefit of the doubt. After meeting up with Andrew, Alli, Kate, Devon and later, Alex (all from the RISE program), we walked across the Rhein towards the bustling carnival sounds and vivid bubble gum colours of the Rheinkirmes. As the name implies, this amusement park is set-up right on the shore of the Rhein and its skyline from the opposite shore makes up a great view. The moment I set foot there, I got hit by the happiness bug and it was difficult to contain my urge to skip down the streets packed with food-stalls and attractions in flashy circus colours. The entrance was free but each separate attraction costs from 3 to 5 euros to ride. There was even a fortune teller sitting in her infamous caravan who could glimpse into your future for 15 euros. By the end, I only went on two rides. First, a haunted house, which should go down in history as the worst haunted house ride ever made. There was sunlight coming in from all directions and the props didn’t inspire much creativity. But I shouldn’t complain because the target audience was obviously not adults and come to think of it, I would be scared too if I were 5. The second was a thrilling log ride that made up for the first one and got us all soaked! It was a really fun day (how could it not be, it was an amusement park!) with a great group of people.

Now on to the topic of the Heidelberg meeting last weekend (has it been a week already?). I will keep it somewhat short because I think all the other bloggers did a pretty good job of describing everything that went on. All in all, I loved it and felt very well taken care of by the DAAD. However, I must say that I was overwhelmed at first by the amount of people there. It was like having a back-culture shock for me to be among so many North Americans as I have been away from home for almost 7 months now.

The DAAD welcomed all 370 of us inside the beautiful Alte Aula of Heidelberg University. We were offered a buffet of finger-foods after the welcome speeches, which were delicious but perhaps the estimations fell short of curbing the appetite of starving students. The next morning, we left for the company tour at Evonik-Degussa. From what I understood, they produce speciality chemicals such as catalysts, perform purification of precious metals, and have a large analytical department. Experiencing a first-hand visit at a successful chemical company somewhat reinforced my will of not working in industrial chemistry. However, I enjoyed listening to our tour guide, a funny and wacky professor, and I was glad to be in company of a nice group of people. In fact, I met April who, as you may know, is also a blogger for RISE!

On the third day was the Heidelberg guided tours. Our tour guide was a lovely English lady who told us that her husband brought her back to Heidelberg as his “prize” from London. She also loved to point out that the Heidelberg castle was bombed by the French and not the Americans, a recurrent theme it seems in all of the tour groups. I learned that it costs more than a million euros per year to preserve the castle in its ancient state as the soil underneath is slipping, but it would be much less expensive to destroy and reconstruct everything. After the guided tours, a friend and I quickly caught a bus heading to the Hauptbahnhof to meet up with a group of friends who were going to Basel, Switzerland for the day. That city really impressed me, as I was expecting something close to Jülich and not a place so picturesque (now I know Basel is Switzerland’s third most populous city; picture on the right). Spending the day exploring that city was definitely a highlight of the weekend. The next day, on our way back to North-Rhine Westphalia region, a couple of friends and I stopped in Frankfurt and spent a lazy Sunday there. Finally a city with skyscrapers – I have not seen those structures for quite a while now. We promised to come back when the shops are open for some shopping.

I don’t like getting sentimental about good-byes, but I must say that this time, it was difficult to depart from new friends that I wish I had the time to know better, especially when they come from far away. Hope to see you all again one day!

That’s it for today’s post! Next week : Hamburg!!! (I am going with Kelly, who is, as you may know, another blogger for RISE J)

Have a good week everyone!

It’s down to six. Six weeks before I have to strap myself to an airplane seat and leave Germany. But it’s not time to say goodbye just yet so I will make sure to cram a trip in each and every one of those weekends, as well as become more fluent in German in the meantime. I feel like it is pointless to just sightsee over the short span of a weekend but until I find another deeper meaning for “traveling”, simply sightseeing will have to do. It will be a while before I get to be back here again. Although going home to Canada is not a bad prospect at all, but experience tells me I am going to feel like I never left. I don’t want to feel like that ever.

This weekend, it was my turn to visit Köln and Bonn. I wanted to visit Köln ever since I got to Germany, as I know it has very easy access to where I am living right now. Andrew, another Canadian RISE student working at the Forschungzentrum, heard from his PhD student about a popular music festival happening over the weekend in Bonn called Rheinkultur. All we knew was that it is a free festival happening yearly to showcase the talents of local and international bands – new ones and big names alike – so it seemed like a good idea to see what the hype was all about and make this into a two-cities-one-day trip. Turns out, it is the largest free music festival in Germany, gathering about 200,000 fans of music of every genre around 5 stages and about 12 hours of non-stop shows. Another plus was the impressive pricing of the train tickets: 27.50 euros for a day-pass for the whole North Rhine-Westphalia region PER group of up to 5 people! Crazy cheapness!

Before getting to the Rheinkultur festival, we got off the train in Köln (our transit to Bonn) and visited the Dom, walked around the shopping district and experienced the Berliner doughnut and currywurst (two firsts for me). I love the texture of Berliner doughnuts, its sandy sugar exterior and cotton insides. I would have eaten it just for the texture itself, even if it tasted like Chinese medicine. The next stop of the day was in Bonn. I loved that city. It still gave the feeling of a medieval town, but the painted version. I don’t know if it was like that in the past, but the houses were all so vibrantly colourful. Beethoven’s house was pink and green???

At the music festival, so many people showed up despite the scorching heat. The truth is, I am scared of hot weather and as always, was painfully numbed by the heat on that day. It would have been nice to stay until the evening, after the temperature cools down but we had to leave by 6:30pm to catch the train back to Jülich. Also, perhaps if we stayed longer, I would have been able to hear some female artists but it was unfortunately not the case… where were they?

Hi everyone!  First of all, sorry for missing a post last week - I was busy preparing for a presentation and lab report for an unfinished course at my host university in Paris.  The presentation was scheduled to be in Paris, on Friday the 26th, which leads to one obvious and two joyful facts (for me at least): weekend trip to Paris and a long photo-blog post this week!  I was extremely happy to be able to return to the city of lights once again.  It allowed me to reach some kind of closure for my semester studying abroad, which was – I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times beforea million times before - an extremely fulfilling and [insert most cliché words in the universe] experience.

On Friday, I decided to go to my definite favourite place in Paris : the Louvre Museum.  It’s always funny to see so many people gathered around the Mona Lisa, all of them with arms outstretched in the air to catch a shot of the mysterious lady.  Since it’s now vacation season, there were a lot of people at the Louvre and barely enough space to move.  Also, entrance is free for youths under the age of 25 on Friday evenings after 6pm (!), so I guess most people are taking advantage of that.  At night, a friend and I went to get some Japanese food on St-Anne, next to Opéra, which is Japan heaven as it is crowded door-to-door with authentic Japanese restaurants.  I just love how the cooks make the dishes right in front of you, and sometimes even personally hands over your plate over the counter!  The food was delish!!  It’s just that the food is inexplicably expensive compared to the prices that I have gotten used to and love in Germany.  A sad story to tell to the empty wallet.     

On Saturday, instead of visiting famous museums and monuments, I decided to walk around downtown Paris for probably the last time in a long long long while.  A friend from Ottawa is also in Paris for the summer, and so we took a walk downtown, from Duroc (the aparment where my friend was living) to Montparnasse (tower of Montparnasse and Rue de Rennes for some shopping), Jussieu to finally, the Notre-Dame cathedral.  One of my secret wishes was met that day when I visited a true Parisian apartment, and it looked just like in the movies.  There was so much class even in the dustiest little corner.  We ate something typically French for lunch : a paté and camembert with baguettes, garden salad and an anise drink (which tastes a bit like licorish).  I never had so much pleasure eating healthy food in my life.  During our day-long stroll, we randomly ran into the Gay Pride parade!!! =D  There must have been a kilometre of open-air buses with people dancing and throwing pink stuff in the air and generally having a good time.  However, my friend is a strict Catholic so the parade was quite the awkward surprise for both of us!  Later, under the trees of the Notre-Dame cathedral, I sat on an unreasonably large piece of bird poop, which, after getting laughed at by random men on the seat next to us, ended the day for me.  But thankfully it was the end of the day and time to wrap up anyway! 

The end to this awesome weekend was very ironic.  I returned to Jülich by noon on Sunday.  I took a 3-hour Thalys train from Paris to Aachen, then a train to Duren and another rural line to Jülich.  This allowed me to figure out the commute between Aachen and Julich, but I was not happy when the ticket machine ate my 5-euro bill!  By then, I was very tired by then and just wanted to have a good power nap when I got home.  Some clarification to what I’m about to discover: before I left for Paris, I was asked by a neighbour that I got along with if he could use my apartment to watch a movie with his friends.  I gladly accepted had to suffer the consequences later because my apartment was left in ruins!  Two mountains of dishes were cluttering the sink, furniture was moved and they even used my appliances to do their personal things.  I just couldn’t believe my eyes!  What a way to end a great weekend! L         

Phew that’s it for this week’s post, thanks for getting this far.  I promise to be more regular with my entries next week!                          

Hello all! This is my first contribution to this blog, and I will be sharing my experiences regularly up until the end of August. I am a 3^rd year undergraduate student in Environmental Chemistry at McGill University in Montreal. But for the last 4 months I have been doing a semester studying abroad at Université Pierre et Marie Curie, in the center of Paris. I very much look forward to turning a new page and spending the next 3 months in a calmer atmosphere. No more crowded metro trains, the stink of sulphur dioxide that haunts all metropolitan cities, the buzzing of metros, trains, buses and sporadic mass protests that keep you awake on a seemingly peaceful afternoon, just when you need that nap the most. There is also leaving all that good stuff – world-class exhibitions, friends and familiar faces, the feeling that you’re part of something…but right now, I’m just very excited about starting a new life here!!

For the next three months, I will be working at the Forschungszentrum (birthplace of the famous IBM supercomputer, on left, picture taken from the website of InSiDE), doing research on the fate of atrazine (a widely applied herbicide) in soils. I’m a huge environment fanatic so I was very glad to discover that many laboratories at the Forschungszentrum focus on developing sustainable sources of energy and many other topics related to the environment!

I arrived in Aachen last Sunday, and immediately moved into my flat in the town of Jülich, about half an hour away by car. The town of Jülich is tiny compared to anywhere I’ve lived in before, and you can fully appreciate how small is it by underlining the fact that there is not a single movie theatre around, let alone one that plays movies in English. But, what’s great about this area is that the rent is cheap (for me at least), there’s plenty of free space, fresh air, and the people are incredibly friendly even if I can only communicate by grunting and pointing. I was lucky to arrive in Jülich right before a long weekend. Instead of travelling to nearby cities, I reluctantly decided to stay at home and work on a project I still needed to finish for school. This meant four full days of procrastination, generally pacing around the house, and dealing with recurrent headaches as I rarely left the building. No, I did not feel like a worthy adventurer this weekend. But I did try one sunny afternoon to chase down the wind turbines that I could see spinning in the distance from my balcony. My mission failed in the end, but this spontaneous bike excursion brought me to downtown Jülich, which was a lot of fun to explore.

Before ending this post, here’s a good line from the movie, “L’auberge espagnole” after the main character, Xavier, arrives in Barcelona for the first time. I couldn’t have said it any better:

When you first arrive in a new city, nothing makes sense. Everything’s unknown, virgin… After you’ve lived here, walked these streets, you’ll know them inside out. You’ll know these people. Once you’ve lived here, crossed this street 10, 20, 1000 times… it’ll belong to you because you’ve lived there.