Sunday, October 20, 2013

Hallo München!


I was lucky enough to have Jake visit me this past week and we took a weekend trip over to Munich to visit his aunt! The trip was a blur of bratwurst, potatoes, pretzels, and beer. Not a single vegetable was to be found with the exception of sauerkraut. It was quite an interesting culinary experience, but left me craving steamed broccoli and spinach like never before.

One of the first things I noticed about Munich was how clean it is, especially compared to Paris. There is no dog poop and very little trash, the sidewalks are nice and large, and the only smell on the streets is the pleasant one of beer and cooking pork. Jake's aunt said something along the lines of "everyone in Germany follows the rules," an idea that can be verified by the blatant lack of jaywalkers and the vast amount of bikers traveling safely in the bike-lanes next to cars and pedestrians.

Day 1 of our trip consisted solely of food. We started with currywurst (bratwurst with a spicy ketchup sauce) and fries as well as our first taste of German Helles beer. After a nap, we launched immediately into a dinner of five different pork and potatoes (knuckle, loin, knödel, spätzle) and beer followed by giant ice cream sundaes for dessert. One of the things about Germany that I could definitely get used to is their tendency to serve beer only in liters (steins) or half liters (half steins) and their idea of beer as being practically interchangeable with water. The sight of a person carrying a stein of beer and a gigantic foot-long pretzel into a beer garden on a Monday afternoon was as common as seeing someone with a glass of wine and a foot-long baguette in Paris.

On day 2, we hiked up to Kloster Andechs, a Benedictine monastery known for its brewery. The concept of hiking up a mountain to drink beer brewed by monks was exciting in and of itself, but the scenery along the hike was also gorgeous. It was great to witness the mountains of Munich transitioning from summer into fall.














Cutest puppy I've ever seen. It looked like a cross between a squirrel and a teddy bear.

On the final day Jake and I did some typical tourist things. We went to the Marienplatz and wacthed the Rathaus-Glockenspiel display at noon, ate wienerschnitzel, visited the Viktualienmarkt, and wandered around the Englischer Garten. At Jake's aunt's suggestion, we rented bikes and biked around the city with a paper map (how people did it before GPS and smart phones I guess, sadly a first for me). Biking in Munich was surprisingly easy and very fun, especially because the weather was cooperating and it wasn't bitterly cold. 

At the Englischer Garten, we saw a pond with ducks in it right when we biked in, so we stopped and fed them with our leftover giant pretzel. The ducks were extremely friendly and swam right up to us to eat out of our hands. It was a charming experience and probably my favorite moment of the trip.

Unfortunate placement resulted in a photo with the bright green construction crane at the Marienplatz.


Rathaus-Glockenspiel 
A stall at the Viktualienmarkt





Surfers at the mouth of the Eisbach, the man-made brook that runs through the gardens.


Sunday, October 6, 2013

Nantes & Noirmoutier


Every semester, the Brown-in-France program goes together as a group to some small and hidden part of France. It's our opportunity to bond as a group and to visit an area that we would almost definitely not go to on our own. This year we went to the island of Noirmoutier, which is just off the west coast of France. We took a train from Paris to Nantes and then a bus from Nantes to the island.

Noirmoutier is marked by the red pin.
Before actually heading to the island, we stopped at the city of Nantes to check out Les Machines de l'Île--an ongoing project that creates awesome steam punk-esque machines. Their past works have included a giant mechanical elephant that visitors can ride, a heron that can fly with people seated in baskets held by its talons, and a marine-themed carousel. We also saw various other smaller projects, all of which moved and worked when turned on. The machines are inspired by a mix of influences from Jules Verne and Leonardo da Vinci.

Miniature model of a tree house that would utilize the various machines as forms of transportation.




The heron in flight. 
They were able to move its neck and make its eyes blink.

The marine carousel.

I got to ride this one! 


Once we got to the island, we were assigned cabins, given bikes, and let loose for the weekend. We wandered the beach and biked into town to explore. The island of Noirmoutier is known for its special hand-gathered sea salt (fleur de sel) and salted caramel (caramel au beurre salé). It also has an old castle from 830 (Château de Noirmoutier) and the Passage du Gois, a paved-over path through the sandbank which connects the island to the mainland. Noirmoutier was rustic and charming, a refreshing break from urban life in Paris.











The church in the keep of Château de Noirmoutier.
The town of Noirmoutier-en-l'Île
View of the Passage du Gois during low tide.
The keep of Château de Noirmoutier.



These little white snails were everywhere on the island! I accidentally brought a live one home with me--I was so surprised when I put it down and came back to it later only to find that it had crawled away. 

Day two - the beach!