Novembre

Ohh boy. Let me apologize for dropping off the face of the earth for awhile. There were several things that...came up. I will go chronologically because that is, after all, the order in which things tend to happen.

November was good, and went by pretty quickly. The first few days were taken up by the end of Fall break. Early on a friend of mine came to visit from Germany and we went to see one of our favorite artists, Morrissey, at the Aeronef. It was a great concert, even if Moz is getting to be a grumpy old man. He introduced one of the songs, Cemetry Gates, as being about people who have nothing to do, and quietly added on "like you people". I had to wonder how many people caught that. And it was nice to be able to stay in Lille and show my friend around instead of having to meet up at a bigger city like Paris or Brussels.

Mid November I went to Caen on a trip with my Danish class for a sort of Scandinavian Festival called Boréales. It lasted all month, but we went on an overnight trip specifically for a colloquium on Denmark and globalization. Caen was very pretty city, I liked it a lot. Unfortunately I only took a handful of pictures, as we had a lot to do in only 24 hours or so. The first parts of the colloqium were Friday afternoon, at the Université de Caen. Afterwards, we went to a concert called Visions du Nord. Everything about it was absolutely gorgeous. It was in a nice, contemporary looking theatre with a ceiling dotted with tiny lights to look like stars. The stage itself was set up very simply, with a glowing bluish indigo backdrop. Then the 20 performers walked out, all of them string players, and played pieces from various Scandinavian composers, including Grieg, Saariaho, and Vasks. I thought it was fascinating. No conductor, nothing fancy, just the chillingly beautiful music and one deep color. I kept forgetting I was in a theatre in Caen. :) The rest of the trip was spent trying to keep up with the other two students from Lille who kind of refused to play nice and talk a bit slower so I could be included in their conversations. There were a few more talks the next morning, then I caught the train back to Lille.



Hotel in Caen




Rooftops in Caen




Ceiling that I loved so much




This one's a bit harder to see, but we sat on the lawn of this...fortress around 11 PM and ate pizza. There were actually lots of young people coming and going and I guessed it's a popular Friday night hangout in Caen?




Sadly this is the last picture I snapped on the way back to the train station. I decided not to take anymore because I was kind of in a hurry, but it really is a charming place...

I am going to write about December in a separate entry because I really feel it deserves its own... you'll see :)