L'Arrivee de Camille!

Heather, Camille, and I spent 2 days together in Paris … toured Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, the Latin Quarter, St. Germain area, etc. Heather flew out on Monday (sad to say goodbye, but we had an awesome time together!) and Camille & I tried to find train tickets to Munich to meet up with her friend Bérengère (German family friend). We were plagued once again by a strike - Air France this time, which made the trains much busier. The only remotely affordable option was a 10-hr night train to Munich, so we went for it. We shared a 6-seat compartment with 4 other people; the trip was pretty much sleepless and unremarkable … except when the confused Gypsy woman in the compartment woke everyone up around 3am because she thought she had missed her stop. She didn’t speak much French or German, so no one could really help her; after 15 minutes of her shouting the name of the German city she wanted to find, she left the compartment and hopefully got off at her stop … who knows! We met up with Camille’s friend Bérengère in Munich and walked around the city for the day. The highlight was the English Garden, a huge intercity park bigger than Central Park in NYC; we had lunch outside at a beer garden in the park. That night we went out to a huge complex of 30+ clubs for Halloween night; it was fun, but the club scene wasn’t too spectacular … however, both Camille & I were happy to remark that the Germans have improved their dancing & music selection since we both studied abroad 4 years ago!
On Thursday we took a train further south to meet Béregnère’s parents and little brother Max, who were on vacation in the Algau Alps in southern Bavaria. They welcomed us with incredible hospitality: got the 3 of us our own room in the resort, greeted us with a champagne apéritif toast, and invited us to eat with them that night in the resort. We woke up Friday to meet them for breakfast in the resort’s restaurant … since it was dark when we arrived, I hadn’t yet seen the spectacular views from our hotel. We were in a valley surrounded by rolling green hills and snow-capped peaks of the German Alps. We took a chair-lift up one of the mountains and spent the afternoon hiking; it was sunny & warm, and I think I now prefer hiking to snow-skiing! We had lunch at a cute little chatelet on top of the mountain … a pretty unbeatable afternoon! Camille and I unfortunately had to take another night train back to Paris, but this one started off much better. For the first few hours of the trip, we were the only 2 in our compartment for 6, so we watched a movie, listened to music, even danced a bit (anything to try to make ourselves tired & able to sleep for the rest of the trip). But our luck ran out halfway through the trip, and 3 people got into our car at one of the stops, resulting in another sleepless and uncomfortable trip. We got to Paris at 7am, and since we couldn’t get into our hotel until 2pm, we spent the morning & afternoon hopping from cafés to bakeries, and ultimately to Starbucks where we spent several hours reading/sleeping … what a way to spend an afternoon in Paris, haha! We found a really cute organic restaurant for lunch and decided to have dinner in our room instead of going out to eat. We ended Camille’s stay with a traditional French picnic of baguette, saucission, Camembert cheese, yogurt, dessert tartes, and wine … très bien!
Camille left on Sunday morning, and I took a train back to Rennes to finish out the school break here. It has been really quiet since I’ve been back since some of the assistants are still gone on vacation … and especially since I don’t have some of best friends with me anymore!! Merci beaucoup to Heather, Adam, and Camille for their wonderful visits - you guys are awesome, and I had such a great time with each of you!!!