Moving back to a place with Cake Frosting

Moving, it is always a hassle and not in the oh no I have to pack up these boxes type way but the oh my gosh if I don't figure out how to fit this gigantic pot into this teeny tiny box then it will be sitting here in France while I am trying to whip up a loving meal in New York sans necessary equipment! The real news right now though is this french version of Craigslist.org... Leboncoin.fr! It is great and surprisingly they have gone beyond the selling scope of Craigslist to include every single region in France so whether you live in a small town of 400 or an enormous town of 2 million, you can get your "stuff" out there and in front of those who are willing to buy it. Those items that are just junk to me are, as I read somewhere one time, someone else's treasure! So someone else somewhere in this vast country (even though its smaller than Texas) is out there waiting to buy my vacuum cleaner, my dishwasher AND my microwave along with my ipod speakers, my floor length mirror, my bathroom scale and my multi-plug plugs! Can we say "amazing!"! Leboncoin.fr is making my life so much simpler as we speak. I am not having to worry over leaving my poor ipod speakers sitting in the corner of an empty apartment collecting dust while I make my trek back to the great US because someone already agreed to purchase at my asking price. I am instead getting to enjoy my week, plan what souvenirs I need to grab before heading back and bake lots and lots of cupcakes (with frosting I brought back from the US!) to travel with us to Nice for Easter weekend.

France has so many things to offer.. including free money

Banks in France are funny. You can open a bank account and put absolutely no money in it. They will charge you 35 Euros total for your bank account deposit and your debit card and will simply leave it as a negative on your account until you put money into it. When you are overdrawn, there are no consequences. In fact, if you need money from the ATM, simply insert debit card and withdraw money. Sure it may be money you don't have but your French bank account does not care. It only cares that it has fulfilled your request. All the while, you can go however long you want with that one straight line in front of your balance as the only sign you are in the negative. How has the French banking system not collapsed? How can I be overdrawn for almost a month and have received absolutely no notice whatsoever and no overdraft charges?

Interesting system they have here...my American bank account is to the rescue though as I look sadly on at its rapid decline. My own misfortune and consequence is I did not bother to convert more American dollars to Euros when the going was good. Too bad I am not a European living in the U.S.... I could be rich.

My Home Comes with Room Service

Traveling.. it is amazing all the places you can travel and even more amazing how a hotel room becomes more comforting and normal looking than your own home. All I want at this point in time is for one single weekend to spend in my home, no constant running around, no quick trips to Paris or Florence, no planning required except for what our next great meal will be... Pure laziness with the Playstation and Wii in its very best form. I do not believe this will ever be in my future...although I do have high hopes for a calm relaxing month in possibly March.

If I knew a fortune teller with a crystal ball, she would have a field day with how un-boring my life is. All of her fortunes would come true. You will meet someone new. You will go on a great adventure. You will have a romantic night with the one you are thinking of. It is virtually impossible not to experience all these things at once when you have a new city to explore. Too bad all I really want is to not leave the house for two days.

Since the middle of May, we have been to Strasbourg, FR; Lyon, FR; Beaune, FR; Mulhouse,FR; Besancon, FR; Zurich,Switzerland; Antalya, Turkey; Istanbul, Turkey; Paris, FR; Florence, Italy and countless little towns. I have only been here for 15 weekends! I have seen more churches than they have in the "Bible Belt" and crossed enough water ways to wonder why our main transportation in Europe is not by boat. I have gotten up at 4 am to be on a train for 4:19 am. I have been in Switzerland and France at the same time in the Basel/Mulhouse/Freiburg a.k.a. EuroAirport. I have taken trips that not only require travel by foot, train, bus, taxi and airplane but also a transfer to a completely different airport within a city all for ONE trip! Life has been exciting, adventurous, crazy, physically and mentally tiring and absolutely gorgeous and stunning in every way.

Now please, everyone join with me, in holding out hope for a uneventful weekend to come my way soon. Although not this weekend... we are going to Basel, Switzerland. Enjoy your weekend!

Old but not in a good antiquey way....

We went to the movies last night...boy, was that a treat! I believe there were only 2 people working the entire theater, the guy who showed up 15 min before our movie started to sell us our tickets and turn on the lights to the theater and the guy who pulled out the film from behind the movie screen and walked it back to the top to begin the film. The seats did not recline and the armrests did not have coke holders. The vending machines for "movie snacks" gave us water instead of coke (it must have sensed I had been eating too much chocolate) and I got a French version of Reisen's. We had one preview before the movie started and with almost the entire place empty were super comfortable in our child size seats with less room than a coach class flight. It was wonderful. Woohoo for movies in their original English version though!

Five and a half miles later

Always be prepared.. for anything! Weigh your options, would you rather have a heavy handbag or would you rather be soaked through with water, have blisters all over your feet, be freezing from the cold and dying of starvation and thirst? I am always trying to lighten my handbag. Taking out whatever I can and whatever I think I quite possibly will have no need for. Its like the second you sit down to dinner, a telemarketer will always call or when you finally give up on someone showing up and you lay down for a nap, your doorbell will ring. If you leave the house without an umbrella (and usually its the day you actually take the umbrella out of your bag), it will without a doubt rain.

We are going on a beach vacation next week so we are trying to eat healthy, be a little more active, you know those last ditch efforts to make yourself feel as great as you possibly can even though two days before you will probably gorge on all the high carb foods you can find and inevitably be bloated up as big as a Macy's Day Parade balloon. Well we decide to take a little walk. Nothing major, just a walk around our little town. I wore flip-flops,.. flat-soled, hard wooden-bottom like flip flops. I knew it might mean disaster but it was a leisurely walk so no big deal. I previously took out my zebra print cushioned insoles out of my bag (stashed there for those just in case moments..you never know when your feet will rebel against you and demand a change of texture) so as to "de-junk" it. Our walk started out innocent enough, we followed the water for a little ways and it didn't feel as if we had walked too far. We continued on our walk, i began to recognize things we had driven past in the car in ANOTHER town! The weather was nice though and it was a nice easy walk. We started passing things on the ground that said 3.5 km, 4.5 km and I joked that the walk was so nice but it wouldn't be so great to walk it back if we got too far. We kept walking.. eventually passing 6.5 km, 7.5 km and began hearing strains of music from the big international music festival that was going on.. a music festival that was NOT IN OUR TOWN! My feet started to hurt at this point, just a little bit then suddenly a searing pain. Soner suggested we turn back but I knew I wouldn't make it that way so we forged ahead hoping for a train station to take back to Belfort. I was willing to pay whatever it took to take the train back. Luckily we did manage to find the train station and we managed to sneak on to the train with the hordes of other people boarding (apparently with the concert ticket stub you could ride the train for free and I guess no one would be in that town for the weekend unless they had attended the concert so...we got very lucky). So as it turns out I have big blisters on the bottom of my feet from walking in my flip flops! I've never had blisters on the bottom of my feet. I didn't even thinking you could get blisters there. What an odd place. Moral of the story, the minute you make a conscious decision to leave something at home you would typically have with you is the minute you will need it. Oh and don't walk over 2 miles in hard soled flip flops much less the estimated 5.5-6 miles we walked (Thank you Google Maps for showing our walking route with mileage)!

Lucky Pennies

See a penny pick it up and all day long you'll have good luck. Do you still have good luck if it was your penny you are picking up?

My trip back to France had already started a bit rough, my flight was delayed (only by about 15 minutes though), I realized I shrunk my jacket and my Kindle did not work. Upon arriving to the Atlanta airport, I went as quickly as I could to my terminal and gate only to find it was also delayed by 30 minutes. Mom suggested I buy a few books at the bookstore since I no longer could take my Kindle on vacation in a week so it kind of worked out perfectly that I just so happened to still be in the US and capable of purchasing English books. The books in the International terminal do not seem to cater to those in search of girly books though. If a physcologist were asking me to think of the first thing that comes to mind when she says "International Terminal," I would say "shopping!" Every International Terminal is always filled with big bookstores with lots of books and magazines, sunglass stores, Duty-Free shops, the works... Not Atlanta! Maybe I was wrong and Terminal T is not the International Terminal. As it turns out..I just looked it up..it is not the International Terminal. No wonder I was a bit depressed at the offerings of T Terminal. It is just a boring ol' terminal. Anyway, so I'm at the "bookstore" and the lady hands back my change and I drop the penny and the dime but woohoo!, the penny is heads up. This is good luck, right?

So I have decided if you drop your own penny and it is heads up, DO NOT PICK IT UP! You are only in for disappointment. My trip home only got worse. My flight ended up being delayed until 9:50 (we were supposed to depart at 8:40). I don't think the plane actually departed until 11pm. At least I got an exit row seat though! My lucky penny is working! Ah but I forgot how freakin' cold the exit row seat is so I tried to tighten myself into the tinniest ball possible and sleep an off and on sleep where I missed dinner and breakfast. My pillow would get so cold if I did not have my head on it that I started having to put it under me even for the few seconds I would move around so it would not be too cold to lay my head on. We finally arrived to Paris at 1pm..about 2 hours before my train would leave as opposed to the 3 hours and 40 minutes I should have had to make it all the way from the outskirts of Paris to the train station. Yeah so I get my luggage fairly quickly, condense it from 3 to 2 bags and am on my way! Woohoo! I can still take the bus and make it instead of spending beaucoup money on a cab. Lucky Penny is NOT working again! Out of all the suspicious looking people, the sweet, slightly rough and tired looking girl (me) gets stopped by customs as everyone else, 100s of people, walk right on by. I have to lift all my heavy luggage onto the scanner to be scanned before I left out and she had to check through my carefully packed bags. At this time, it is too late to take the bus and a taxi is my only option. Online it said it would take about 20-30 minutes to make it to the train station without traffic. It took my taxi (without traffic) about 45 minutes but 57 Euros later, I was finally at the train station before my train had left so that was a plus. One day, I will have someone explain how my amount owed went from 49.10 euros to 55 Euros then to 60 Euros all in the matter of 30 seconds. He said 55 Euros in French and then 60 euros 2 seconds later in English. Maybe he thought he could rip off this poor tired American girl. All I could come up with was 57 Euros so apparently that was good enough... It should be! That one stupid cab ride cost be 80 US$. As much as my 4 hour train ride cost but at least I made my train and secured my luggage and I was good to go except that it looked like someone threw up on the corner of my seat and had not been cleaned up but at this point I was hot and sweaty and did not care and oh by the way Mom, about those trains being air conditioned...this one had air that barely crept out but at least I had air. The cab driver wouldn't even let me open the window in the cab and he turned the air on only in the front while I am dripping sweat in the back. Lovely! Train ride wasn't terrible though..I was only 5 minutes from home I thought until Soner had to call and burst my bubble and tell me the board actually showed my train was 40 minutes delayed. I am alive though and clean after a very long shower.

Moral of the story, I will never pick up a so called "lucky penny."

By the way, every guy that chalks it up to "experience" ought to be shot and then taken on their own "experience" trip. I have never had a woman tell me "oh well, it was an experience" especially when another woman is at their breaking point and just pushing their luggage out the train door just to be out of the stupid train. Thank you Dad and Soner for letting me know it was an "experience." I will plan a great experience for just the two of y'all and I'll even let you two enjoy the "experience" together instead of having to deal with it by yourself, in a foreign country without a normal working phone or people who even speak halfway broken english.

Exciting Moments in a Newly Implanted Belfortians Life

I have had countless exciting days since I have moved to Belfort such as finally finding an apartment we could call home for the next 5 months (4 now! Wow how time flies!). It wasn't the beautiful European style apartment I had imagined myself living in with a wrought iron balcony that I would have my morning coffee and read the paper on, if I drank coffee or read the newspaper much but I have grown to love my apartment regardless of the boring ultra modern exterior with bright and I mean seriously bright red balconies and grey-blue exterior.

Actually receiving the furniture so we could live in the apartment was also another great joy. It is a bit depressing knowing you have an apartment but cannot live there although what is even more depressing is actually moving into your apartment and not having the essentials to actually live there. You know the essentials are on their way, making their way through some part of the deep blue sea but having yet to have arrived, it was quite a costly adventure on our part but at least we could finally stop eating out! Trips to Ikea ensued and we became the very proud owners of a rolling cutting board/storage and an adorable cafe sidewalk in Paris table and chairs for our balcony along with some other its and bits. Some of the biggest excitements though have been the actual arrival of all of our stuff. The wondrous container from Turkey! It was like Christmas when it arrived. Everything was new and shiny and fun to play with...well that is until I had to wash it all..by HAND! Ooh but the food, so much food! We had every kind of food imaginable from nuts to bulgar and rice to canned tomato paste and stuffed grape leaves. We had soups and desserts and a huge can of olive oil. We have enough tea to last us for several years! (Click on some of the pictures to see the full photo)
Those two boxes are filled entirely with food...the food in the other photo is additional food that was not in those two other boxes.

As you can see, I am having quite a lot of fun here with all these new and exciting things. Hand washing dishes every single day has become something I greatly look forward to not having to do but somehow we are left with dirty dishes if I do not do them. Laundry, another fine example of one of the great joys of life in Belfort! I wait for my very "efficient" washing machine to wash one load of laundry, roughly about 45 minutes then I hang each and every individual piece of laundry from the towels and sheets to the rugs, socks, underwear, shirts and pants. I hang socks! That is what I do. I uncrinkle the socks and I place them neatly on the drying rack so they can dry. This is one of the great things Belfort and my apartment have to offer me. A learning experience and each and every day, I learn more. For example, last week, I learned how to create a pocket shape so my laundry will billow in the wind hopefully creating enough friction and beating between the fabric to soften them from board stiff to paper soft. I also learned that our square plates do not fit well in our drying rack which is causing a lot of stress and headache as one day the domino effect will happen when one slides out and push them all to a shattering death on the floor. By the way, FYI to anyone considering getting an apartment with all tile and wood floors, beware! Somehow hundreds of particles of fuzz land on our floor everyday, I am assuming from other people hanging their laundry out to dry and everyday, I have to vacuum only to have more fuzz and particles on the floor by the end of the day. Today, I have vacuumed twice by the way and it is only 1:45 in the afternoon. I mopped earlier and I didn't want my pristine floor to be dirty. We don't wear shoes in the house yet somehow our feet the bottom of our nice clean feet begin to look a bit dirty after a few hours on our floor.


I love Belfort and all the great learning experiences and exciting times I have. It is truly a joy to live here (I am not actually being sarcastic). This is the only time in my life in which I will probably ever wash all my dishes by hand and hang dry all of my clothes (I will even go to work everyday and let Soner stay at home and do all those things if somehow we cannot seem to have those little daily conveniences in the future!) and I will always be able to appreciate all the hard work and effort that goes in to it and whenever someone tells me I don't know what work is, I will tell them to try running a household without the conveniences you have grown accustomed to and then, I will show them my cut up, dried out hands.