Paris Parts 4 and 5…

…are coming soon. Just let me get through finals first! Sorry for the delay.

France Part 5

This is probably the closest margin of time between entries EVER! So, if you haven’t seen my Lyon entry (France Part 4) be sure to read that one too.

After returning from Lyon, we had a field trip in Treasures of Provence the next morning. This one took us to the Musee d’Archaeologie in Apt. Apt is a town we’ve become familiar with, as it is our destination for running errands and enjoying the open-air markets on Saturday mornings. However, we haven’t really looked at it much in its historical context until now. Apt is actually quite an extensive site dating back to the Gauls and Romans, and quite a lot of artifacts have been found there. The museum has a large collection of these, but unfortunately is not open to the public due to funding and theft issues. We were lucky enough to get a look at what few parts of the collection are not stored away.

As we wandered through the museum, there were a few displays, but most of the larger items were strewn rather haphazardly. There were boxes and crates everywhere with the capitals of Roman columns and stelae sticking out. It was a somewhat surreal experience to see all these things ‘displayed’ in such a bizarre fashion. My particular favorite item in the museum was a stelae carved by a former slave of Rome thanking the god Mercury for granting him his freedom. The text on it (and many of the other stelae) was so well-preserved! It really helped to humanize the people of the Roman Empire.

Perhaps the highlight of the visit was venturing underneath the museum (more Roman ruins underground!) to see the remains of Apt’s theater. Although this was not nearly as extensive or impressive as the underground ruins in Barcelona, it was still unexpected and very cool to see.

Wednesday also featured a field trip, this time to our maintenance man, Jean-Pierre’s mosaic studio in nearby Casaneuve. Casaneuve is even smaller than Lacoste, but Jean-Pierre (in addition to being our maintenance man and a world-renowned mosaicist) is the town’s mayor. He has done mosaics for the likes of U2, Sandra Bullock, and Carnegie Hall, so getting to see his studio was quite a treat.

We were greeted at the studio by his friendly (but filthy) sheepdog Pomme (Apple in English). She helped Jean-Pierre show us around the studio. He explained his process and showed us his wide variety of works, from Roman-style images to figures to pop-art. His tiles are mostly gathered from Roman sites in Provence, so essentially he is recreating Roman mosaics with the same materials they would have used.

Following the tour of the studio, he invited us to his house, which was small but incredible. Here, he served us tea and chocolate croissants and showed us the many artifacts he has collected from Roman sites. These ranged from coins to axe heads to belt buckles and even a fully intact human skull. He let us handle most of them, which was quite the rare opportunity.  After visiting with him for a bit, it was time to return to Lacoste for lunch.

After lunch, I had quite a bit of free time, so I decided to explore the area around the town. I went into some caves down by the lavoirs (where the residents of Lacoste would have washed their clothes in the days before running water). I also went to the cemetery and just enjoyed the peace and quiet and the beautiful weather. After trekking back up the hill into town, I decided to go up to the Chateau de Sade.

I explored it quite a bit (probably more than is allowed) and also went into the woods behind it overlooking one of the quarries. As I was peering over quite a steep cliff, a man jumped out from behind a rock and said “Hi, I’m Gabriel!” Needless to say, I jumped out of my skin and nearly fell off the cliff. I told him he had scared me and he apologized and wandered off. Very strange. I took a different road down from the chateau than the one I took up, and it turned out to be a bit treacherous, but my Doc Martens and I managed. I was just happy the weather was nice enough for me to go exploring and take some good photos.

The rest of the weekend was a huge series of events all its own, deserving of a separate post which I will add sometime tomorrow or Tuesday.

Barcelona Interlude

This has taken some time, but I’ve been pretty busy since I got back from Barcelona late Sunday night. Now I have to think about how I could ever possibly manage to narrow Barcelona down into a blog post.

First, I guess I should mention our field trip to the Ochre Quarry in Rousillon, which was the Monday before we left for Barcelona. It was interesting to see the way they collected and processed ochre in the area before the industry died. I particularly liked seeing inside the processing area and all the old equipment that was used there. Our trip to the quarry was followed by a short visit to the town of Rousillon itself, whose main point of interest is that all the buildings are red-orange-ish since they are made of ochre-enriched stones. The views of the ochre canyon from the town were also very cool. Unfortunately, the weather for the trip was horrible, and I was sick, so I didn’t quite get the experience out of it that I might have otherwise.

Now, time to completely overshadow Rousillon with BARCELONA, which I intend to go back to as soon as possible. We got on the bus at 8am Wednesday morning and rode for about 5 and a half hours with stops every two hours. We saw a not so pretty area of France…that is until we got to the Pyrenees. It started when I could see the Mediterannean outside my window, which made me pay a little more attention. I then looked out the front of the bus and saw a huge snow-covered mountain that just looked absolutely spectacular. Then on the opposite side of the bus, I saw the wind turbines up against the mountain range. Everyone kept trying to take photographs, but it was just too hard from the bus. Fortunately, we soon stopped at a rest stop, and in spite of the unappetizing and overpriced food, we were able to get some good pictures.

About an hour after we left the rest stop, we pulled up to our hotel right in downtown Barcelona. Driving into Barcelona was overwhelming- in terms of area, it’s much much bigger than I imagined. It also definitely has a gritty side to it, but I kind of expected that. We arrived at our hotel, which was extremely nice and conveniently located. After getting settled in, we wandered around for a bit and explored the immediate area, which included a number of restaurants and stores. We were quick to notice how inexpensive most of the clothing stores were and definitely started keeping some in mind for later. One of the architecture professors, who used to live in Paris, told us later that Spain is the best place in Europe to buy clothes because it’s so cheap. Following about 45 minutes of exploring, we returned to the hotel to meet up with the professors and go on the first of many school-organized trips. This one was to the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The walk to the museum was very short, and when we got there, we were surprised to see that the courtyard in front of the museum had become a sort of make-shift skate park. Not only was this not punished by the museum, it was encouraged! I thought that was a neat idea. The building itself was very modernist with whitewashed walls and a lot of steel. It had nice flow and was overall pretty effective as a gallery space. The art itself, however, was not my favorite. At least not on the first floor in the permanent collection. It was all very disturbing, and a lot of it was videos that were aimed at making the viewer uncomfortable. I guess I just really didn’t get a lot of it. The second floor, on the other hand, featured an exhibition by Joan Rabascall. His art is from the 60’s-80’s and is all about the criticism of mass-media, objectification, and consumerism. His pieces spoke to me, particularly his video montage about the Munich Olympics projected onto a massive billowing Olympic flag. I got a lot out of this exhibition and will definitely pursue my interest in Rabascall in the future.

After the museum, we had the afternoon and evening to ourselves. We spent this time getting oriented to the area around our hotel. Jamie, Miles, and I also scoped out a restaurant to try. It was this first night we discovered that Spaniards don’t start dinner until 8:30 at night.  We went to a reasonably-priced tapas restaurant and tried a number of things, most of which I still can’t identify. It was all good though. Not outstanding, but good. After dinner, we hung out for a little bit before going to bed. I almost forgot to mention that the main language in Barcelona is not Spanish. It’s Catalan, which is quite a bit different. Not many people spoke English, which didn’t give us too much difficulty, but it was definitely a little bit alienating. Luckily, most people did speak Spanish, so Jamie was able to help us in most situations.

Thursday morning, we got up, enjoyed the free continental breakfast, and left for the (school-organized trip to) Sagrada Familia. This is the IMMENSE cathedral that Gaudi began building in the late 1800’s. Gaudi died in 1926, but the cathedral isn’t slated to be complete until 2036. The scope of this thing is unbelievable, and the detail is mind boggling. It’s truly impossible to describe. I took dozens of photos just of this one building. We got to explore the inside and even scale the spires, which took us high above the city. To get down from the spires, we had to walk a down nerve-wrackingly narrow spiral staircase that seemed never-ending. Inside and outside the building, there are workers constantly working to continue the building’s construction. It reminded me a lot of a modern day Pillars of the Earth.

After the Sagrada Familia, we ate lunch at the park near the cathedral’s front facade. At this point, the rain sta

rted, and basically didn’t stop for our entire trip. We then walked to another Gaudi building (and another school-organized trip), the Casa Mila. It took us awhile to find it because we didn’t have a very good map yet, but we finally arrived (albeit 15 minutes late). This building was much more museum-like, featuring period furniture from the late 19th/early 20th century. A museum about Gaudi’s work was located in the attic, which was somewhat creepy to me. It is composed almost entirely of parabolic arches and it’s dark and eerily lit, making it seem almost nightmarish. The museum was interesting, however, and I enjoyed looking at models of Gaudi’s projects. The highlight of this building, though, was definitely the roof. With its weird sculptural chimneys and undulating surface, it reminded me of being in a Dr. Seuss novel.

We were pretty tired from walking after Casa Mila, but Jamie, Miles, and I decided to stop by Casa Batllo (Gaudi’s dragon building), which was on the way back to the hotel. As much as we wanted to go inside, the price of admission was pretty expensive, even for students. Nevertheless, we spent quite awhile admiring the outside, which is made to look like the scales and skeleton of a blue dragon/serpent. That night, we ate dinner with about 15 other students at another tapas place. This place was more expensive, but less tasty than the other place. Although some of the architecture students decided to find a club to go to, a lot of us decided to go to back to the hotel and relax.

The next morning, we went to the Contemporary Center of Catalonian Culture (school-organized). None of the exhibits had anything to do with Catalonian culture. They had a really overwhelming exhibit about urbanism in China, but it was a bit much for me. I find China interesting, but the way the exhibit was laid out and the things that were shown really didn’t do it for me at all. We did a bit of shopping before going on another school-organized trip to the Pavillion Mies Van Der Rhoe. This was a LONG WALK. As for the Pavillion, I freely admit that I just didn’t get it. I probably needed to have known more about Mies Van Der Rhoe to really appreciate it. Anyway, I didn’t regret the trip, because it took us to a very cool area of the city which we broke off from the group and explored. We got to see the Placa d’Espanya, which is a square with an awesome fountain in the middle of it. We also got to walk up to the Palau Barcelona (Barcelona Palace) which is yet another amazingly detailed and beautiful building surrounded by sculptures. We thought about going into the Palau, but did not want to pay the admission since we planned to go to the Joan Miro museum.

After taking photographs of the Palau and views of the city from the Palau (which is elevated enough that you can get a really nice overview of Barcelona), we took a short, rather pretty walk to the Fundacion Joan Miro (essentially a Joan Miro museum). I’ve recently discovered that Miro is one of my favorite artists, and this museum was probably one of the things I enjoyed most in Barcelona. His work is so unique and original…as Andre Breton said, “He’s the most surrealist of us all.” Seeing his paintings and sculptures in person was just an incredibly powerful and moving experience for me.

After the Miro museum, Jamie and I took the metro back to the hotel to rest a bit before dinner. We also did a little bit of shopping near the hotel. Miles wanted to find a Basque restaurant, but we had some trouble locating one due to the language barrier, so we ended up at the Chinese restaurant across the street. It was surprisingly delicious! And for four people, the total ended up being about $30. They also gave us bracelets and free shots of…something…(I have no idea what it was) at the end. Once again, we turned in early.

Saturday morning, we had a school-organized trip to the Palau de la Musica Catalana. This is an amazing building constructed in the early 20th century during a time of Catalan revival. The outside and inside were both incredibly ornate and overwhelmingly beautiful. I particularly enjoyed the sculpture inside the music hall itself, but unfortunately we were only allowed to photograph the outside of the building. I bought a postcard of the inside, but it disappeared and I am really unhappy about it. After the Palau, we went shopping for awhile and enjoyed exploring all the European fashion. Personally, so far, I have been much more impressed by Spanish fashion than by that of the French.

When we finished shopping, we found we were pretty near to Barcelona’s Triumphal Arch, so we decided to go check it out. It was very cool, in a complex with the hall of justice (no idea what its actual name is) and a neat park. Upon exploring the park, we discovered an awesome fountain called the Cascades. It was definitely my favorite fountain in Barcelona. From there, we took the metro to the Gothic District, which is probably one of Barcelona’s most famous areas. It’s all confused narrow streets and (surprise) Gothic architecture. We attempted to go to the Barcelona Cathedral, but it was crowded and overpriced. Instead, we went to the Roman history museum, which allows visitors to go underground and explore the Roman city that Barcelona was built on top of. This was INCREDIBLE. I never thought I would see part of Ancient Rome in such a humanizing and well-preserved manner. Once again, no photos allowed, and none of the postcards really did it justice. So, if you have any reason to be in Barcelona, GO TO THIS MUSEUM. After that, we took the metro back to the hotel, and after a nap, Jamie and I went to dinner at what appeared to be a Spanish chain restaurant. It was a little pricey, but the paella and Catalan sausage were delicious. The beers were also double-sized, which I appreciated.

That night, we attempted to go out, but it was rainy and no one could decide on a place to go. This ended with one of the students (whose name I won’t mention) breaking the stairs in a super-chic bar. The others stayed out, but at that point, Jamie and I decided to buy a six-pack and some candy at one of the convenience stores and go back to the hotel to watch weird Spanish music videos.

Sunday morning, we went on a school-organized trip to the Picasso Museum in the Gothic District. It did not contain any of his best works, it was extremely crowded, and there were people there to force you to travel through the museum in a certain way. I HATED it and could not have been happier to leave. We had the rest of the day free, so we found another Gothic cathedral that was free to go in, the Eglesia St. Maria del Mar. We wanted to do some more shopping, but most of the stores were closed. We ended up at the “Book and Coin” market, which is a crazy open-air market in a really weird non-foreign-friendly part of town. There were a surprising number of comic stands in the market, and overall, it was a lot of fun to explore. I wanted to find souvenirs, but ended up just getting an old book to transfer my Treasures of Provence journal into. After the Book and Coin market, we only had about an hour before the bus left, so we just hung out in the immediate area of the hotel.

The ride home was uneventful, and we got back to Lacoste at about 11pm, where we were greeted by the Mistral. It blew all week, stopped yesterday, and started again today. It’s just as piercing and cold and irritating as the books described it. My week has been uneventful, besides hanging out with Claire, Dalton, and Jamie night before last and a short visit to the De Sade last night. Tomorrow morning, we leave for Lyon, so I will try to make that update a little more prompt than this one was.

For more photos, I recommend going to my Facebook albums. There are a bunch from all of my travels thus far, so go have a look.

Barcelona 1

Barcelona 2

Barcelona 3

France Part 2

Yeah, yeah it took me long enough.

So what’s been happening in Provence? Let’s see…Thursday night, almost everyone in the group filled up the Cafe de Sade for a night of wine and merriment. Several of us befriended the chief of police of Marseilles, who lives in Lacoste so he can get away from all the people he has to deal with in Marseilles. His name is Alan (not sure if that’s the correct spelling) and he is very nice, and even buys drinks for us sometimes. After the de Sade closed (around 12:30), several of us migrated to one of the student lounges, where we just hung out and chatted for the rest of the night. It was our first opportunity to really get to know each other and it was a lot of fun.

Friday, I woke up with a cold, but it wasn’t too bad yet. I went with some other students to explore the quarry, just outside of Lacoste. I had been there briefly before, but this was a much more adventurous trip. At first we went down into it, where we were surrounded by the towering sheer walls, which are covered in graffiti dating back to the 1800’s. After taking some photos and wandering around, we decided to try to get up on top of it. This involved a hike through the woods around the quarry on paths that may or may not have been there on purpose. After quite a climb, we finally reached the cliffs overlooking the quarry, and reached the base of the natural bridge that goes right over the entrance to it. We climbed up onto the natural bridge, which is mostly stacked boulders and stood in this very precarious and icy spot looking down at a massive drop. This was an incredibly scary experience (especially for me and my fear of heights), but it was definitely worth it. We climbed down the other side of the bridge and found ourselves back in the woods. And then, to our surprise, we happened upon a trailer park, complete with above-ground pool and scary decrepit tool shed. It was like the French version of Deliverance. We weren’t really sure where we were in relation to Lacoste, so we started looking around to get our bearings. One of the residents caught us snooping around and was able to help us find the road back to Lacoste, although I don’t think she was all that happy about it. On the way back, a dog (whom we dubbed Pierre) followed us into Lacoste. We have seen him around since then. He is very friendly and well-trained. I think he probably belongs to one of the Lacoste residents.

That night was fairly uneventful. The Mayor of Lacoste was issuing a New Year’s toast, which I didn’t attend because I was trying to sleep off my cold. Apparently, it wasn’t very interesting apart from the scotch-spiked punch that was served. Saturday evening was a bit more eventful. We attended the gallery opening of some visiting artists, which included an open bar. Unfortunately, this happened before dinner, and some students got pretty embarassingly drunk, which was kind of a shame. The space was quite small, so it was difficult to really appreciate the work. During dinner, there was quite a bit of merriment, and afterwards, we returned once again to the de Sade. Drama ensued thereafter, which is not really worth discussing here. I will simply say that this night was not nearly as much fun as Thursday.

That night, while I was taking a shower, I had a bit of a ghostly experience. I felt a hand run its fingers down my back. This sent me running out of the shower and left me a little bit freaked out. Later on, I went back into the bathroom and asked whatever it was to not do it again, so hopefully that will keep it away. We haven’t had any other experience since then. So far, so good.

Sunday was spent finishing up some homework. We also took a trip to the cedar forest planted by Napoleon II, which is pretty high up on the mountain near Bonnieux. It was a peaceful place, and though a lot of people found it boring, I actually liked it a lot. Miles and I spent the trip wandering through less-traveled trails, and besides being REALLY cold, it was fun. Class on Monday and Tuesday was fairly uneventful. We are in the process of doing student presentations in both classes. I presented the Theatre d’Antique in Treasures of Provence today and will be presenting Plan Voisin in Le Corbusier tomorrow. Friday, the entire group travels to Marseilles for the day, so I should have an interesting report from that trip. The architecture students are staying there all weekend, so it will probably be a pretty quiet weekend.

The past several days, we have had some interesting fog. Sunday night, we watched from our terrace as a massive, fast-moving fog rolled in over the Chateau de Sade, through Lacoste, and down over the valley. It was quite an experience…I’ve never seen anything like it. Then, this morning when I woke up, all I could see outside the window was pure white. I stepped out onto the terrace, and even some of the buildings in Lacoste weren’t visible. It was very strange.

Time now for me to finish my presentation for tomorrow. Expect an update with my experience in Marseilles sometime this weekend.

Bout time for an update…

Unfortunately, there won’t be a real update tonight. I have some work to do. I blame my lack of posting on the holidays and getting back to school. But soon (hopefully very soon), expect a post about a card game I made with some friends, as well as something regarding narrative in games.

Let the blogging begin.

I’m told on good authority that it’s wise to keep a professional(ish) blog. So I’m doing just that. This is my first entry, coming to you directly from White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, where it’s a miracle we even have an internet connection.

White Sulphur is a good place though. The town is small and the people are friendly. It’s nice sometimes to come here and escape the reality of the rest of the big bad world. Despite West Virginia’s reputation for ugliness (we’ve all seen the pictures of strip mines and trailer parks), this area is quite lovely. I challenge anyone with a prejudice against West Virginia to come here and say anything different.

It’s fall, and that means college football is in the air. It’s been a strange and exciting college football season, and right now it looks like WVU stands a good chance to play in the national title, which would be incredible. I love football, both professional and college, which seems to be an uncommon trait among my contemporaries.

I guess that should bring me to the actual point of this blog, which will be (among other things I’m sure) game design. I intend to post as coherently as possible about whatever game-related things come to mind.  Ideally, that means I’ll be doing a lot of posting. Of course, all that will depend on how busy I get in the coming months.

Right now, It’s about 20 minutes til game time, so I need to bid the cyber world adieu for the time being. Go Mountaineers! Go Noles! Go Jags!