à la recherche du temps perdu

ah, exchange student life.

where one can just meet a random friend on the way to the library and decide to go eat lunch now and then during lunch, decide to join a group going to the Louvre in 10 minutes...

where, even more extreme, one can plan a 7-day trip to Rome with 4 people, then privately decide that one wants to stay in France instead, only to have the 4 others also suddenly ditch the Rome trip and come along...

...and thats exactly how our trip idea from Toulouse to Nantes started, and now it has snowballed into a project involving seven people, an Opel Zafira, and several dreams of finding the meaning of life somewhere between Biarritz and St-Jean-de-Luz...

Actually, this is just the way I wanted my college life to close, as a sort of reminiscence, reflection and re-interpretation on the preceding 5 years of my existence, or what college life was all about.

impromptu visits to the capital; ramblings (I am a bit sick,,,)

I give the title because we went in with one of my friends (name deleted to insure anonymity, and to avoid being blamed for posting this) to meet some friends of this friend. Unfortunately, the friends' status as friends seemed rather questionable since they hardly bothered to even aknowledge the existence of my friend when we finally found them, after having been chased through half of Paris by frantic cell-phone calls, initiated exclusively by my friend. (you can guess that my friend is a guy, and that my friends' friends are pretty girls)

oh well; good to see that the parisian froid-sang is contagious; (perhaps I myself will learn something from this, maybe becoming less gullible to those telephone surveys that I always somehow feel obliged to answer, or to always accept random acts of kindness from strangers, no matter how counter-productive, for instance like being driven up from the store in Jouy-en-Josas to campus, even tho I still needed to go to the post office, because I couldn't decline such a charming offer from a local étudiante)

Anyway, Im drifting off again, but dont blame me, blame me being sick today, with swollen eyes due to some infection which I hope will go tomorrow...

And now, for something completely different:

us at the cafe at the place du Luxembourg.

And now for something completely the same. Us paying for the coffee at the cafe at the place du Luxembourg. Notice the heavily opportunistic use of 5 cent pieces to get rid of excess ballast.
The Pantheon. There are many great things about it, including the great French it commemorates inside, and its entry prices, the latter of which explains why we didnt go in to see former, at least yet.

The Louvre; Im getting a bit sloppy. It seems I have forgotten to rotate the picture; actually, I blame my swollen eyes, which make me now have the motivation for manipulating pictures I cannot see anyway be lower than that of a claustrophobic chipmunk closed in a cage.

Where I'm @

Hi guys. Now, many of you didn't want to believe me when I said I live at the end of the world. Well, guess what? I've got photo-graphic proof, courtesy of Google Earth. The first way of telling that there is nothing exciting in a 50' radius of here is the fact that no-one actually bothered to place one landmark sign on the map, except one guy who mistakenly labelled the HEC restaurant as a "compelling culinary center clear of any comparison" [just kidding, even students here would not be arrogant enough to claim that...], anyway, please witness the map below, with the signature forest (which I see outside of my window) separating us from the outpost of civilisation others call Jouy en Josas (top of picture).

Axtually, as I am writing this, I am currently residing in the house the furthest to the west of the bottom quadrant of the photo. I'd point to which one, except I'm not at your pc, so that I could point. As a clue, it's actually the one closest to the main building, on the bottom left [right above the (C) symbol], a fact that comes in handy when the alarm tings 5 minutes before class starts at 8...

News around Campus

Attempting to act sustainable, I stumbled upon a strange paradox: the cheap, humongous, environmentally friendly refrigerator I have devised right on my dorm's terrace is actually not sustainable; for whatever will I do when summer comes??? Already, I have started to consume my Hoegaardens to keep them safe from those inquisitive rays of sun that seem to radiate ever more often onto my rain-worn balcony.

On other news, I have somehow landed in FRENCH IV, aka. the hardest French class; I'm one of the two boys in the class of about 15, which is somehow typical of high-workload courses in general here; apparently, the men here seem to have found more lucrative endeavours, like shirking work and occasionally bumming beer from my giant refrigerator.

The university St. Gallen has written me, and has decided to accept all my "reccommendations" for how the credits should be transferred; I guess the absolute holy terror, (including the sending of pathos-laden mails with sentences like "... es macht keinen Sinn, hier Kurse zu nehmen, ohne bescheid zu wissen, ob sie mir überhaupt angerechnet werden.... ") has finally paid off!!!

Finally, a few colleagues, most notably me and Luis from Mexico, saw a car the other day for 700 Euros, and started fantasizing about doing road trips in France; now how cool would that be? If I had the money, I'd do it, but I certainly don't, plus, that seems like a hard sell to my parents at home...

Paris by night

There are several mysteries inherent in life, including why the HEC has a separate building for sport activities (gym, indoor soccer field) without any shower or change rooms, why my room shares a shower cubicle with the adjacent one, with a translucent door (not that I am opposed to this, for as I hear, a french girl is just moving in ;P ), and why, oh why the HEC and the Uni St. Gallen still haven't figured out whether they want to give me even 1 lousy credit for this exchange semester; apparently, St. Gallen is not convinced that these classes here are actually master level, even tho they do stem from a master-level catalogue.... pompous bureaucrats. Whatever, just trying to let off some steam here before going on to the praising Paris part.

Well, here I am sitting in my room, after a long day of crawling the capital yesterday followed by a gratuitous binge-sleeping session till 12 today morning. Far from reporting In Westen Nichts Neues, there are several fun facts I want to share with you, in condensed form, of course.

Im glad to report the Eiffel tower is still standing; I subjected the great needle to a véritable strip-tease as I approached her from the east, revealing more and more of her iron-clad beauty as she slipped from behind a line of Parisian apartment buildings; ooh, here she is in her dotted dress:


with this fascinating, beautiful "upskirt" shot of the core:

well to sum it up, the monument is just huge in every respect! I mean, I think it beats any skyscraper because of its singular "approachability", exposure, and naked grace!

So, apart from these little nightly adventures, what else did we do?
Well, we took pictures of the turbid Seine, where my body is perhaps going to be thrown into: We took a little rest, to have a drink at an even littler cafe, out of even smaller little coffee cups (check out how everyone is trying to dive out of this picture, btw... poor Austin was caught in the middle, feeling perhaps a bit uncomfortable at not being able to slip away...)
plus, we posed the obligatory student-tourist-group picture
and we risked our lives, in traffic, to take pictures for YOU.

Paris, the first time

Yeah, so it was my first day in Paris today; I went in with Tamás after everyone else who wanted to go either skipped or went separately; in fact, even the few guys still coming in with us decided to get laptops instead of exploring the city... At least this left us with less waiting for everyone to take pictures, rest in a little cafe on the way, buy the cute little porcelain doggie in the shop window or have a quick burger at Mc. Donald's....

So today, we were actually able to cover quite a bit of terrain in a first little preliminary exploration of the premises.... But actually, let me backtrack a bit and say that the city where we are living, to put it more exactly, the city that we live close to, is actually what the Swiss would call a kaff. A kaff, and in a huge way. Meaning in a tiny way. Meaning, it is not a small city, it is a tiny, tiny, little miniscule outpost in the middle of the pampa. Here a picture of one of the main arteries:



Oh yeah, and the shopping district by night:


Impressive, huh? Well, after that much provinciality, it is understandable that we were a bit interested in the big life. So that's why we took a metro to the Ile de la Cite and were not that suprised to find this:

Ah yes, the Notre Dame. And to overuse a term favoured by american tourists around the world, the inside was even more beautiful than the outside, witness this somewhat overexposed shot (for dramatic purpose, of course)...

We then proceeded to the Centre Pompidou, of which I shall not share any pictures, because I couldnt get it all into the viewfinder. Instead, how bout the Louvre, with Tamas posing, to make the picture more lively :)
Then, we took a long metro ride from the Concorde to the Sacre Coeur, and were greeted by a great view of the tower:
and the city:

I promise you, the next post will be more amusingly written.
Thing is, today was more about educating me than about entertaining you; for because of former,
Im way too wasted now to do the latter.

Second full day in Paris

Well, all of you who were on academic exchange will know that the first three days seem to take forever, then, all other days fly by like [insert the name of a very fast bird here]. Knowing this, I decided to leverage the extra time by doing something I usually have trouble squeezing into my repertoire: go to the gym and lift weights senslessly for 1 hour, known to germans as pumpen. In the gym, I found (suspiciously) thin frenchmen, with one of whom I started a conversation. How I liked it in France was his first question, and whether Paris was the most beautiful city in the world was the second. Well, judging by his complexion, I prolly would have gotten away with a double negative, but, I thought, why not be nice and soothe his Gallic soul with a bit of sweet talk...

Now, how bout some random pictures I took not long ago:

another from the RER on my way here, continuing the story on the previous post...
Ma chambre, with ma laptop.
The view today morning. There was a mistake, I did not order snow.
self portrait with bed and shawl.
My lunch, alu-foil style.

And now, my cheries, Im going to go shopping in Joy-en-Josas, and Ill bring you some pix....

Goodbyes & PARIS, here I come....

Ok. so these last few days have been heavy with heartache and hard goodbyes. I said goodbye & good luck to the new executive board:

Then to Rouven & Daniela who had organised an incredible "au revior party"

Then to mah friends in Zurich, including mah main man Dominic, too, with whom we even light-signed an artistic photograph (with my mobile):
And of course I said bye to my family... at the end of all the goodbyes, when everyone had definitely seen enough of me, and was already in the stage of "ok, but now go", I took a deep breath, boarded a train, aaaand....

and sooner than I expected, I had entered the heart of French civilisation. Now, you might have expected a beautiful picture of the Eiffel tower, but instead, this is me on a french RER, already heading for the HEC campus. The sour face is due to being woken up so early in the morning. All I actually got to see of downtown paris so far was a short flash of the Sacre Coeur... Too short for pictures :))

So, what adventures await me in Paris? Loot? Adventure? Classes on Chinese History I ? The latter most definitely, of the former two: only time will tell. So far, Ive only met a Hungarian called Tamas and some snooty french people, one of whom switched to English while talking to me, which I gather is NOT a good sign.

Ah well, the excitment of tomorrow awaits.... Here my resolution manifesto for the whole French Trip:

1. Take everything with humor & levity
2. It will never be like this, ever again. Be conscious of such mortality!
3. Always remember your secrets (I don't remember what I meant with this 1 ;) )
4. France? It's a dream. Don't worry, diffuse... or wake up...
5. Be French. Be intellectual. Spin Virilio and Focault into your discourse
6. Enjoy the first 5 days. then, enjoy the next 5.
7. Blog. Rename your blog "mouches mortes"
8. Always remember home.
9. Write, search serindipity
10. Create words. Forget lists. forget this list.
11. Yeehaw. Paris as a student. this just rules.

Be number 2007 and Win!

Traffic around my blog has hushed up a bit, because my posting frequency fell below the heartrate of a yoga guru on sleeping pills.

So to celebrate the reopening, to celebrate 2007, to celebrate another year of ridin' dirty, I will sponsor a special deadflies pimp prize to whoever hits number 2007 on my site!

Cheers and get ready for the new year.

Happy New Year

Hi everyone! I just wanted to say happy new year! Being the extrovert lifestyle intellectual that I am, just saying that will not suffice: instead, I would like to say happy new year dressed as a modern Mozart. After this picture was taken, I proceeded to play "Praeludium in C" on the piano, a piece that I later remembered is by Bach. Oh well, baby, same millennium!

Garfield Live!

New and updated post, using english grammar!!!

I was gonna give this post an alliterating name that rhymes with "tussi mixtures", but then I thought, better not be flagged by Google, plus, how low would that be stooping for a gag, anyway...

Now, I know I have sunk low anyway, posting pictures of Garfield instead of fun, crazy travel pictures to exotic locations. I'm sorry, I just don't happen to be at a fun, exotic location right now, so I'm trying to make due with what I have. Looking at the beautiful things all around and closer to me, like the cat, or these cans of empty beer arranged in a floral pattern littering my desk. Less beautiful, albeit more smelly is the kitty litter box just outside the door, which I see as just another example of collateral damage caused by Garfield. To wrap up this topic, enjoy the picture of her posing,
then discovering the paparazzi and choosing the most consequent exit strategy.

Furry Friends

Now I usually don't blog about my domestic life, because if you'd come to my apartment, you'd realize that there is nothing funny about a flat where a hair dryer can cause a major power outage and there are legends about when the tub was last cleaned [updated: my new flatmates cleaned it! they actually pumped something like an entire wookie from the drain]

So when Rouven, my new flatmate, confronted me with a cat, and asked whether we can keep him, well, I instantly realized this is prima face blog material. For this blog is the forum where I am allowed to be blatantly honest about some things, including domestic wildlife.

So to be honest, my first reaction was shit, one more thing for me to trip over when I'm on my way to a midnight snack. My sombre mood lasted until I opened the refrigerator, and smelt that I had forgotten my sardines in over the weekend! Now, it was while smelling the sardines and contemplating whether they were still edible for humans that it struck me: what about edible for cats? it might be OK for me, but yum-yum for the cat! why not feed the cat?
The cat is huge and fat and orange, so I think I'll call it Garfield.

Of course, before Greenpeace storms my site, I will say that eating the food is strictly voluntary for Garfield, but of course, I do recommend the fish... cause I would probably have eaten them myself, were it not for her...

Update! : it did not end up eating the fish, but I did find it in my bed this afternoon, so I guess that makes it 2:0 for the cat...

Small intermezzo.

Now, I would love to keep churning out posts incessantly, but even you have to admit that like plants, bloggers need food, sleep, and sunlight; so just re-read my previous posts, while I fix myself some spaghetti and brainstorm further entertaining stories to waste your prescious time...

Albania: the ultimate bogus road trip.

Somehow, after days of hard conference work, my soul was aching for a little treat, parhaps some more space than the cramped plenary could provide. Little did I know, that this treat was just around the corner, in the form of the ultimate bogus road trip, one right across the border, to Albania...

The trip actually did not start out being a real treat, with the Don (2nd from left) breaking and entering my hotel room at 7.30 (early if you consider the last picture from the party before was thankfully labelled by my camera as having been taken at 5.30), shaking me from sleep and telling me that the "taxi to Albania is waiting downstairs." "...Taxi to Albania??? ah right..."
I had no idea when we had had such a seriously whacked idea.
So I emptied my pockets of all things I wouldn't need to be buried with, realized with a sigh that my breath still contained enough alcohol to be considered a fire hazard, found the way out of my room down a flight of stairs I had previously not known existed, and so the bogus journey began....




Before you could say "kalashnikov" Leo The Don, J-B & me were already being whisked away to our uncertain fate. My brain was franctically pumping out theories and new topics regarding inhumanity while we sped through somewhere... yes, such was my condition, that I took about 20 pictures like the one above...

Somehow, the landscape flying by seemed to confirm my apocalyptic mood...

I recalled Mad Max, being reminded of the inequality, coldness, and hostility inherent in mankind, plus that cool part where Mel Gibson battles it out with postapocalyptic warriors on top of a rusty land-train...

Yes, Albania was quite special. For me, the hot & cold, extravagance and poverty was an incredibly moving experience, especially because I was still far from sober.

Seriously tho, the pictures confirm what I still remember about the trip: that one part of the country was in ruins, and right next to there ruins, brand new houses were being built, and inbetween the houses, the craziest, most excessive BMWs were cruising; everywhere you could buy Cartier pearl-tipped duty-free; The Don didn't want to miss out on such a deal. Of course, like all of Cartier's discerning clientele , he preferred to pay in American Dollars.

Compliments on Albania, it was the only place that I was miraculously able to withdraw Euros from the teller machine, as opposed to Skopje, where this had proven impossible. (The lack of bancomats in Skopje is probably at least in part responsible for my skeptical description...) To make a long story short, we had a brief sojour in Pogradec, a type of turbo-capitalist city, with Mercedes S Classes cruising dirt roads in a martian feudalism that reminded me of nobility cruising desolate landscapes in the classiest carriages in Dicken's Tale of Two Cities...

EuroCo part II.

But before we go to heaven, let's go shopping. We actually went to the biggest Mall in Skopje, which you actually cannot miss, because it's right next to the main square.

I had to cringe a bit about the negative side effects such incapsulated opulence has on its surroundings (if you didnt get this one, just read my publication):

of course, I have already discussed south central Skopje in my previous post. So let us go onto more pleasant subjects, like for instance our visit to the only restaurant open on sundays at 15.30, McDonalds.

Obviously, I had fun photographing our accompanying frenchmen in flagranti with a BigMac and fries...

Soon, it was again time to leave this safe haven for the bogus bus trip which would take us to paradise lake.

now, before you all get the impression that I was just goofing off and that students don't have to attend lectures in paradise, I have to dissappoint you, referring you to the picture left. Important to note is that the capital letters do not signify any brainwashing; they signify POINTS WHICH I KNOW TO BE VERY RELEVANT TO ME.

But, after all the work I did, I also needed fun and recreation.

Now, I know that different stakeholders visiting my site expect different content, and I hope you're appreciating the mix. To again fulfill a few expectations, here a wild party pic:

Which I have censored, to satisfy the expectations of another group of stakeholders. I believe everyone should be happy now.

Now, many of you have been telling me "Berti, I like your blog, but I think too often, you're posing with the wrong people. Some say, I shouldn't be posing with uptight people. Others say, I shouldn't be posing with drunk people. To show my synergious nature, here a picture of me posing with two security guards. And to answer your question: yes, they were drunk. As you can see, I felt secure, nevertheless (so they were actually doing their jobs quite well).

EuroCo in Macedonia.the real monty. Instead of the full one.

POP Quiz: Who can find Mazedonia on the map? Anyone? Ok, who noticed I spelled Macedonia wrong in the last sentence? Everyone? Great. Obviously I am dealing with a selected clientele.

Just kidding. Here is some help, courtesy of google earth:

Check google earth sometime. there is a small hardcore of crazy people, labelling everything including our offices in Macedonia. (thanks to Marko doing this, I have more spare time to mark the University and City Kebap in St. Gallen.)

So this is the country I started my bogus journey from. Note the little star on the map. Thats Skopje, the capital. Although it looks small from up here up here, its actually a great city. Please feel free to misunderstand great to mean splendid in this context. What I actually mean is that it has lots of inhabitants.The nicest thing is, it still has that touch-of-socialism spirit, with lovely attention to every detail, including the water faucets which are too long for the sinks underneath.

We took a small tour of the hotel surroudings.

now before I get irate mail on the one-sidedness of this portrayal from all Macedonia fans, I would like to refer you to my exit to purgatory/entering heaven at the Lake Ochrid post... So yes, I am a wee bit biased against Skopje, but I am already planning my return to other parts of the country... [In the first picture, lake Ochrid is the one where the google user went crazy labelling and ended up missing the screen and our attention span with his monstrous text-snake.]

Yes, that is heaven...

...where we went to after we endured the murderous elevator doors, missing steps, street races, and general chaos of Skopje.... so to talk about heaven, I will see you on the next post.

EuroCo I

Just to sort of lighten your spirits before I dive into the world of hedonistic indulgence,

Take a moment to contemplate what I was confronted with...

...from my hotel window.

At lake Ochrid,

a quiet earth.

EuroCo, here we c o m e . . .

Ok. The picture above is not evidence to the fact that I fixed the blogger problem; for all I did is blatantly freeload a picture link from another website. What it is evidence for, is that I think Ill have a good time in EuroCo in Macedonia... a REAL good time. Like, my dad kept telling me, if youre going to Macedonia, you just have to go to the Ohrid lake; I'm like, well, umm, I think Ill be living quite close.... ;)