Tram Characters

So, the famous trams. I spend at least 30 minutes a day on these things, just as a basic commute. This gives me ample time to people-watch. And i've proudly come to the conclusion that there are six different types of tram-people:



The Drunk
This person, typically male, lounges across at least two seats, reeking of stale alcohol, and staring vacantly at the window. Not at the view out of the window, but the window itself, resulting in a strange, hazy expression. His pockets can often be heard clinking.

The Homeless Man
He walks down the tram, mournfully holding out a hand, earnestly asking if anyone can spare a few centimes. When people politely decline, as they invariably do, the Homeless Man moves solemnly on to the next person. Might be more effective if he didn't do it every single day. Anyway, if he spent less money on tram tickets/fines, and more on housing, he'd probably be a bit better off.

The Pushchair-wielding Mother
Yes, you have a pushchair twice the width of the aisle. No, it most definitely won't fit. Oh, you're going to try anyway? That was my foot.

The Old Lady with Shopping
She gets on at Orvault-Morliere, with more shopping bags than she can sensibly expect to carry. As the tram corners just before Bignon, the bags topple over, unleashing an array of conveniently circular groceries onto the tram floor. Old-Lady-with-Shopping then proceeds to gather up the escapee vegetables, tins and bottles from the floor, and puts them back into her bag just in time for her stop, Plaisance.

The Teenager with Music
This young man is on every single tram, on every single line, all day, every day. His mobile phone has some microscopic speaker which is capable of blaring out music at an surprisingly loud, yet low-quality level. He somehow remains completely oblivious to the fact that his pocket is making such a horrendous noise and defiantly out-stares anyone who even thinks about making eye-contact with him.

The First-time Tram-ers
This is a couple who quite possibly live in a little village near Nantes. They are therefore completely befuddled by anything remotely tram-related. This unfortunately includes doors, tickets, seats, holding-on, getting-off. For this reason, the First-time Trammers often get off at the wrong stop, after falling over, losing their ticket and puzzling over the tram map. Even then, they can't open the door.

Day in Angers

In 845, the Vikings invaded Angers.
In 1204 Angers was conquered by King Philippe II.
In 1585, the Huguenots invaded.

Then, more importantly, in 2010, Angers was invaded by three assistants from Nantes. One of whom was so enthusiastic that she convinced us to get the 09h55 train. On a Saturday! Grr.

It took just over half an hour to get there on the TGV, which is pretty reasonable. Google maps kindly informs me that it would have taken 19 hours to walk. The enthusiastic assistant had already thoroughly researched the town, and had made a military-style itinerary of the day's events.

We started off with a walk around the town centre, and crossed the River Maine. The view on the postcards in the shops looked spectacular, with a sweeping panorama of castles, churches and luxuriously green trees, bathed in rich sunshine. In reality, it was not quite so picturesque, due to it being winter, cold, half-cloudy, and a huge tarpaulin covering most of the castle.



For lunch, we had galettes at a creperie. I don't think i've mentioned these galettes yet, so i'll explain. They're a traditional Breton food - 'Breton' being from Brittany, the region of France where Nantes used to be. Basically, it's like a savoury crepe, which typically contains ham, cheese and an egg, but you can choose pretty much anything you want to go in them. Here's a photo of one:



For my dessert, I had three different kinds of sorbet - lime, passionfruit and Cointreau. The latter comes from Angers, so it felt appropriate to try some while I was there.

In the afternoon, we wandered down to the Collegiate Church of Saint Martin, which is the oldest church in Angers. It doesn't sound like much of an accolade, but there must've been well over 50 churches in the town. The foundations of the Collegiate church dated from the fifth century, with every layer above being built a few centuries later. Lazy French builders, I reckon. Click on photo for a better view.



Later on we went to visit the castle. It's an fairly imposing example of a castle, and is seen by guidebooks as the first of the proper 'Loire Valley Chateaux'. It houses the 'world's longest' tapestry - or the 'Apocalypse', as they call it. It's basically a cartoon strip of the book of revelations, but with a liberal helping of seven-headed dragons. I'm no biblical expert, but i'm sure dragons are fairly limited within its pages. We weren't allowed to take photos of the tapestry. I think this is partly because the flash would spoil the fabric, and partly because people would then expose it for the con it actually is. Longest tapestry, maybe. But, they'd chopped it up into sections which were a maximum of 30 feet long. There must be some tapestry-world loophole regarding cutting them up that I don't know about.


Slightly disconcerting sign - 'Apocalypse, this way'

The castle had some impressive gardens too, and the view from the top of the tower was suitably panoramic. it was trying to snow while we were on the tower, so it was perishing cold. My cold, shivering hands tried to take many photos, but swiftly decided to retreat into my pockets before frostbite settled in.

The gardens:


Freezing-cold view from the castle across the river and, unfortunately, dual-carraigeway. French town-planning doesn't take into account nice views, apparently:



The last two photos aren't entirely relevant, but I quite liked them. One is typically French, one is typically English. I wish i'd been able to get them in the same photo, but i'm not sure that 2CV drivers take kindly to being asked to pose in front of 'phone boxes. Still, here they are:

Muse-indoctrination.

I only had one class this morning, and thus finished at 09h20. This meant I ended up going home in the rush-hour, all be it completely the wrong one.

My only class was with the 3ème€, who are the cleverest, oldest and nicest children in the school. Well, not officially the nicest, but that seems to be the way it works out. The lesson was on 'English music', which basically involved me talking to them about music I like, and asking them about their tastes. I also showed them a section of a Muse DVD, and they did a 'fill-in-the-lyrics' sheet to one of the tracks. It's always satisfying when the pupils don't want to leave at the end of a lesson.

I'm off to Angers, a nearby town, tomorrow. I'll keep a tally of how many bad jokes are made about the name.

Nantes at Night.

A few nights ago, myself and another assistant went into town in the evening to go to a bar or something after both having a hard day of teaching. When we got to the intended bar, however, it was shut. So, we instead decided to go on a cultural Nantes-at-night tour, taking in pitch-black views of the cathedral, silhouettes of statues, and generally getting freezing cold.

Our efforts paid off though, as the River Edre was looking rather nice in the moonlight, resulting in a bunch of alarmingly-yellow photographs. I'd like to add that Nantes is nowhere near this yellow in daytime - I think it's a combination of streetlighting and my camera. Still, they look pretty...:

Marché

I visited an authentic French market on Saturday morning. Photos can't really capture the bustling hoards of French people fighting to purchase vegetables from the loudest farmers in the world, but they're better than nothing.

Conforming nicely to the French-people-wear-berets stereotype, this farmer was selling leeks and carrots:



They also had crazy amounts of pineapples for sale, at three for 1€. Yet every week there are farmers protesting that they're not getting paid enough. I can't help thinking that maybe it's their own fault for charging so little. Also, growing pineapples in France?! The bill for heating the greenhouses must be more than the cost of all the pineapples put together!



I like all of the colours that you find in French markets. The trouble is, they then put all the vegetables into a meal in a red wine sauce, and everything goes a deep reddy-brown colour. They should leave it raw, as it looks much more exciting:

Thirty-five Hour Week?

It's a hard life being an assistant. This week i've had to endure a gruelling three-hour week. And to make it worse, they insist on paying me as if i've worked a full week.


A photo from the Jardin des Plantes. Irrelevant, but pretty nonetheless.

Four hours of lessons were cancelled on Tuesday, as half the teachers were at training days in nearby Angers.

Then, on Thursday, most of the teachers at the school were on strike, so I decided to join them. Partly because I enjoyed striking so much last time, and partly because it meant I could send Frida off properly from the station; better than putting her on a tram and running off to teach.

All in all, i've worked out that i've been paid £69.58 for every hour that i've worked this week. When worked out pro-rata, that means my yearly salary would come to £141,000. Which is £6000 more than the Prime Minister.

It's a hard life being an assistant.

Swede in France.

Frida left this afternoon, and I wandered back alone to the shed to clear up the alarming amounts of facewipes, cotton buds and assorted make-up items which mysteriously appear on every surface in her wake...

It was awesome having her here for a week - it gave her a chance to see where i've been hiding since September, and gave me a chance to try and pretend there's actually stuff to do in Nantes!

Apologies in advance for the photo-laden post, but it's much easier to explain things with pictorial accompaniment:

The first thing we went to see was the castle, where we traipsed around the ramparts together in the rain. It's not the most spectacular castle in the world, as half of it seems to have blown away, fallen down or been replaced. However, it does provide a nice view of nantes' rooftops:


We also went to see the 'Machines de l'Ile' (the huge mechanical elephant), but he was hibernating, apparently. Instead, we wandered around the 'Chantiers Naval', which is the former shipbuilding dockyards of the Loire. I think they're protected by some kind of historical-building-presevation-thing, as there's a lot of open space which they could build apartment blocks on, with a view of the river. Only a matter of time, I suppose...


Another Swedish-hunger excursion brought us to the only KFC in Nantes, which is conveniently placed right next to the Nantes ring-road. To then go to the Atlantis shopping centre, we had to walk over the road on a deserted and foggy footbridge. The looming shadow behind Frida is the 'Zénith' - France's biggest indoor concert venue, which seems to be housing mainly Elton John gigs. Apparently he has quite a following here?


Once we'd crossed the footbridge, and avoided all trolls which were possibly residing underneath, we ended up on the other side, in Ikea, conveniently. I managed to avoid buying any flatpack furniture, but Frida and I both purchased one of these little fellows... Not entirely sure why. Still, at 0,99€, you can't go wrong!


It was difficult prising Frida away from her Kottbullar/Boulettes de Viande/Meatballs:


The last 'touristy' thing that we did was to climb up the 'Tour LU' - not as arduous an ascent as it may sound. The LU Tower was a part of the Lefevre-Utile biscuit factory, which relocated, leaving a shell of a factory and a single tower (there was previously an identical tower aside the remaining one). The building is now known as the Lieu Unique, and is a bar, restaurant, bookshop, and general cultural space for exhibitions, dances, concerts etc... Here's Frida faithfully recreating the exact shape of the tower with only her arms. Remarkable, eh?:


The week went way too quickly, and before we knew it, it was time for Frida to go back to the grey world of Reading, slushy snow, and the Number 17 Bus. Still, it was very nice to see her for a week. Our last three rendez-vous have been in three different countries. We're a truly tri-national couple!