Weekend #4: Stuttgart and Oktoberfest

I was really excited for this weekend because we got to go to the 200th anniversary of the Oktoberfest Festival (aka something to tell the grandkids)!  The planning for this trip was a little complicated because we didn't want to spend the night in Munich since the hostel prices were well into the 100 euros/night bracket.  We decided to visit Stuttgart on the way to Munich and spend the night in a hostel there instead, which was much cheaper!  We left Metz very early in the morning on Friday and spent the whole day and night in Stuttgart.  Early Saturday morning, we trained to Munich and spent the entire day and part of the night at Oktoberfest before taking the couchette back to Metz.

Stuttgart is the home to the Porsche and Mercedes-Benz empires.  We visited the Porsche museum on Friday.  For someone who doesn't like cars that much, I enjoyed the museum.  We made our way back to the main shopping area and grabbed some much missed Starbucks.  The Starbucks we went to asked if you wanted your drink for here or to-go because drinks that weren't to-go were served in a REAL mug.  Crazy!  Next, we visited the museum of modern art.  Unfortunately, we just missed the new exhibit about food and art by one day, so I felt like there wasn't that much to see.  There were still some really interesting pieces and I enjoyed the museum.  We headed back to our hostel (Inter-Hostel)  to ask where a good place to grab dinner was and they directed us down the street to a typical German restaurant.  I've never been a big fan of German food and let's just say that I'm still not, haha.  That evening, we took the train up to the observatory tower and got to ride the elevator all the way up (130+ floors) and see all of Stuttgart at night.  The path to get to the tower was a lot of fun because it was not lit well and through a creepy forest.  We had a lot of fun scaring each other (playfully, of course!)  We were exhausted by the time we got back to our hostel and all went to bed.

Early the next morning, we walked to the train station to catch our train to Munich.  Once we got on board, we realized that our seats we in a compartment (much like the ones from the Harry Potter movies!)  We excitedly took a lot of pictures of our home for the next few hours.  We arrived in Munich around noon and immediately set out for Oktoberfest.  After walking around for awhile, we realized that we should go back to the train station and ask for directions or a map.  The tourism office was really helpful and we purchased tickets for the S train and made it to the festival, finally!

Arrival at Oktoberfest!

We took awhile to get beers because it was too crowded to find a table to sit down and order.  Eventually, someone yelled over at us and asked if we were from Canada because one of us (Curtis) had a Canada shirt on.  The group that yelled was a hockey team from Italy, but most of the players were from all over the world...including Canada.  The team let us borrow their table to order beers and the drinking funtimes commenced!  It was pretty awesome that we got beer because of Curtis' Canada shirt because he made a point to wear it on that particular day so people wouldn't think he was American.

After 2 L of beer and a few trips to the bathroom, we went to the carnival area and paid way too much money to ride some of the rides.  We ran into some other GTL-ers at the Ferris wheel and we hung out with them for the rest of the night before catching an S train to the main train station to get our couchette back to Metz.

I'd say that Oktoberfest was a little overrated, but it was definitely an experience to be there and I had a lot of fun regardless!

Click here for pictures from this trip.

-JChamp

LCC Trips

So, I'm in this class called LCC 4813: Gateway to Metz and we basically get to take free trips all over the Lorraine region and some of Germany with the French professor (Madame Serafin, who is VERY similar to Ms. Frizzle) to learn about the history of Europe and how the EU was developed.  This post will be dedicated to the first 3 trips we've had.

Robert Schuman House and Museum

Robert Schuman is known as the Father Europe because he basically jump-started the creation of the European Union.  We traveled to the nearby village of Scy-Chazelles to his house and the museum dedicated to his life's work next door.  We watched a pretty informative presentation about how the EU was started and got to ask questions that probably only Americans would ask.  Then we got to go into the house where Robert Schuman lived.  The society had added some quintessential Lorraine furniture to his house, but a lot of the things inside were his original belongings.  He had a pretty big book collection and a spacious office.  We saw the bed where he died and his car (a replica) too.  After a tour of the house, we walked around his huge garden.  The trees along the main pathway were trimmed so that they were growing out only along 2 sides (so they were flat).  They were really interesting and modern looking.  We visited the exhibit in the adjacent building before heading back to Metz and GTL.

Click here for pictures of this LCC trip.

European Archaeology Park in Bliesbruck (France) - Reinheim (Germany) and Roman Acqueducts


This trip was over an entire day.  A mini bus took us to the Archaeological park which is located right on the French-German border and we began our tour of the ruins of an ancient Roman city.  I honestly didn't find this trip very exciting but some of the hi-lights were the following:

• Seeing the original central heating system remains
• Crossing the French-German border by foot and grabbing a beer (on a school trip!) on the German side from a very friendly vendor
• Seeing the tomb of a Celtic princess
• Doing cartwheels in the field with Siri and Amanda and then getting scolded by Madame Serafin
• Touching the semi-electric fence around the sheep on the German side of the park and then watching others touch the fence without knowing it was electric and laughing at their reactions
• Seeing the bath house and toilets (mostly because it was the most complete exhibit)

After our tour of the ruins, we visited some Roman aqueducts remains around Metz.  Aqueducts are how the Romans got water to the big cities from the mountain streams and rivers.  The Romans figured out how to calculate the very slight angle to move the water downhill over many miles and they used less material by constructing arches instead of solid walls.  Basically, they are incredible achievements in engineering, architecture and math.  Read about them here.

Click here for pictures of this LCC trip.

Malbrouck's Castle, Dukes of Lorraine Castle, Flea Tower

Today was labeled as the "Medieval Times" day in our syllabus and it certainly was.  The first castle we went to was the Malbrouck's Castle.  It has been renovated, repaired, and stabilized with concrete over the years to be safe for visitors of all ages and conditions (aka old people and children).  Most of the exhibits had the information listed in French, German, and English so were able to self-guide through the castle.  There were some great views once we got to the top turret of the Witch Tower (I have no idea why it's called this, but the other castle we saw had one too).  The most interesting thing in this castle was probably the explanations of how they renovated the roof of the turret of the Witch Tower or the photography display of pictures taken of the castle.

The next destination was the Dukes of Lorraine Castle in Sierck right along the Moselle River (which runs through Metz).  There was a bicycle race going on through the city, so we had to take a strange route to get to the actual castle.  Madame Serafin warned us that this castle was not as safe as the last castle because a volunteer historical society takes care of all the exhibits and they don't have enough money to do renovations. This made the Dukes of Lorraine Castle a lot more interesting, though.  We climbed to the top and ate lunch in the picnic area before breaking off in small groups to explore.  We had a map, but we didn't use it very much.  Some of the walkways were very slippery and steep so I almost fell a few times, but it made the trip more fun.  There was a torture chamber, lots of spiral staircases, and many tunnels to get lost in.  There was also a beautiful view of the Moselle River from the top.

In the afternoon, the bus drove us to Thionville where we visited the Flea Tower.  This is a tower built by Charlemagne in medieval times (obviously).  It's basically a museum now, but it was cool to walk through the whole thing.  Afterwards, Madame Serafin bought us drinks at a local restaurant and then we headed home.

Click here for pictures of this LCC trip.

-JChamp

Weekend #2: Les Fetes de la Mirabelle

I'm a little behind on blog posts (my apologies).

2 weekends ago (August 27th-29th) was the Mirabelle Festival in Metz.  The festival celebrates the mirabelle which is a small plum/grape-like fruit.  One of the professors here brought some mirabelles in for us to try.  They reminded me of muscadines because of the pit, but they were more grape-like in texture.

I had French class until 8 PM on Friday, so I was a bit later getting downtown for the beginning of the festival.  We ran into most of the other GTL students in Place St. Jacques (the main square in downtown Metz where many a beer is had).  All of them had crazy clothes on and they took us to a tent near the cathedral to partake in the crazy clothing extravaganza.  Basically, you could buy a toke for 2 euro and "shop" in the tent of used clothing.  The point was to create the most ridiculous outfit that you could come up with and then the attendants would take a picture so you could be included in the competition for the best dressed.  I came out looking kind of like Janis Joplin.  The boys kept joking about me having illegal drugs in the folds of my many skirts and dresses.  It was GREAT fun and probably a great way to fundraise (which I assume was what was going on).  It would be a great idea for a Pride or OPA event next semester!  Here are some of the costumes:

After our shopping spree, we danced to the music of some bands in the same square before heading to a bar.  We went to Comedie Club and did a shot and had a beer or two.  Afterwards, we decided that we wanted to find a club (or discotheque) so we could go dancing.  We ventured out again and ended up running into our dorm manager, Benoit.  We asked him if he knew of a club we could go to and he said he did and offered to pay for our taxis to get there.  Benoit and his friends got in the taxis with us and we made our way to La Rouge.  There were about 8-10 of us (2 girls and 6-8 boys) plus Benoit and his two friends.  We made it to the club and Benoit bribed the bouncer to let us in without paying cover.  We had a lot of fun dancing on the main dance floor for an hour or two despite a few awkward instances when Benoit danced with me.  Benoit led us off the dance floor after awhile and we thought we were leaving, but we were actually going to the VIP lounge.  He bribed the second bouncer and we went upstairs to the much smaller VIP dance floor.  We danced for several more hours and both Benoit and his friend, Hugo, danced with me and Siri several times.  I was still having fun, but it just seemed like a strange situation since I have to pay my rent to Benoit.  I guess it could be considered a conflict of interest....oh well.  I had fun and so did everyone else despite those weird moments.  We got home around 5 or 6 in the morning...crazy night.

The next day I slept in for a long time to catch up on the lack of sleep from the night before.  After I woke up, I went downtown with some people and had a kebab and a beer in Place St. Jacques.  We wanted to make it to the Celtic concert and fireworks display, so we hoofed it over to the field near the Centre Pompidou.  There was a bagpipe choir already playing on one of the smaller stages and we watched them for a little while before the real concert began.  A famous musician played the penny whistle with a band and I really enjoyed listening to it...reminded of my Celtic Women CD (ha, embarrassing).  Once the concert finished up, the fireworks show started.  It was probably in the top 5 best fireworks shows I've ever seen.  There were crazy fireworks that looked exactly like a flame and a sheet of fireworks that burned for several minutes.  I loved it! Right before and right after the fireworks show, some of the spectators broke out into some Celtic dances.  Siri, Guillaume (one of the French graduate students that we've befriended), and I joined one of the dances and acted like we knew what we were supposed to be doing.

Sunday was dedicated to a market and the parade, which featured the 2010 Mirabelle Queen.  The parade was only okay to me because it seemed poorly organized and only featured bagpipes and floats.  I liked bagpipes a lot, but I think I've had my bagpipe fix for awhile.

Click here to see pictures from this weekend.

-JChamp