Since we had a two week vacation experience in Paris in December, we quickly adapted to our typical French style of life, starting with the petit déjeuner with dark coffee and pain au chocolat from the nearest boulangerie.
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One can never get disappointed from boulangeries in France....eclairs, tarte aux fraises...etc., you get them in any small boulangerie and they are good. Not every bakery has a coffee machine, though, but the coffee one gets is always strong enough to give a morning kick-in.
The C.I.R.M. ( Centre Internationale de Rencontres Mathématiques) looks too comfortable not to take a room overnight, although our little apartment is also cosy and located in a well-functioning village. The campus "Luminy" is basically a natural park on the hills near les Calanques, so quiet, contrary to the noisy, dirty centre ville. But if we stay in the hotel in campus(where there's nothing except office buildings), I would always want to go to the city everyday.
Our little apartment is in the Mazargues Village, which I suppose is a suburb of Marseille. It's between the Luminy campus and the city Marseille, with direct bus to both sides. It's actually a small hostel for backpackers ( but I haven't seen any...I thought they would gather in the mini bar in the house and talk very loud). (1)
Our apartment is few doors away, renewed recently with old furnitures :p. Unfortunately it's a studio with a small electrical heater, like what I had in Bordeaux, which means it's freezing in the night. Apart from that it's cosy. I like the color of the wall...light orange with small "dust" painting, like sand. There's a picture on the wall of extremely clear blue water, which maybe tries to echo that we are in a coastal city, although I'm sure this picture is not taken at the Marseille beach.(2)
Where we stay the street is very quiet, we went to bed early at 9 pm, exhausted from getting up at 5 am, and travelling from one airport to another, to Munich then Marseille, then taking a bus to railstation, where we spent half an hour trying to get a public transport ticket for one week, then changing to Métro, then another bus to the Mazargues Village.
The owner of this small hostel is very friendly and smoky ( too many cigarettes :p). He's planning a hostel in Philippines and will leave France forever as soon as he saves enough money. 'The country ( France) is beautiful, but I don't like the people,' he says. Hahah....First time I hear that from a French.
In my heart it's always contradictory when I think about where in the world to settle down in the future. At the beginning when I came to Europe, I always missed so much the rich variety of Taiwanese cuisine. But once you get used to cold salad and bread, food is actually not the big problem, besides one can always cook at home. On the other hand, you can't get the best French cheese and the original Hungarian salami along with good and also cheap wine in Taiwan. But there's always a feeling of something missing... I think it's the warmth in people and in the life style from hometown.
It's really a hard choice between "Taiwanese snacks ( 小吃) + insects and air pollution" vs. "lack of hot delicious food and warm people + the best drinking mineral water from tap + no cockroaches in the whole country(okay, maybe I exaggerate just a little bit, but I haven't seen one in Austria)."
And this is just one of the very simple comparison on the surface.
P.S.
(1) I went there again after I wrote this article and I saw only girls....maybe this guy only takes reservations from girls??
(2) I was wondering that I've only seen such beautiful beach in Maldives, turns out it's really in Maldives....The most beautiful country in the world in my opinion at the age of 10....unfortunately I haven't had the chance to visit there.
Here's a link:
www.visitmaldives.com/Photo_gallery/index.php
The C.I.R.M. ( Centre Internationale de Rencontres Mathématiques) looks too comfortable not to take a room overnight, although our little apartment is also cosy and located in a well-functioning village. The campus "Luminy" is basically a natural park on the hills near les Calanques, so quiet, contrary to the noisy, dirty centre ville. But if we stay in the hotel in campus(where there's nothing except office buildings), I would always want to go to the city everyday.
Our little apartment is in the Mazargues Village, which I suppose is a suburb of Marseille. It's between the Luminy campus and the city Marseille, with direct bus to both sides. It's actually a small hostel for backpackers ( but I haven't seen any...I thought they would gather in the mini bar in the house and talk very loud). (1)
Our apartment is few doors away, renewed recently with old furnitures :p. Unfortunately it's a studio with a small electrical heater, like what I had in Bordeaux, which means it's freezing in the night. Apart from that it's cosy. I like the color of the wall...light orange with small "dust" painting, like sand. There's a picture on the wall of extremely clear blue water, which maybe tries to echo that we are in a coastal city, although I'm sure this picture is not taken at the Marseille beach.(2)
Where we stay the street is very quiet, we went to bed early at 9 pm, exhausted from getting up at 5 am, and travelling from one airport to another, to Munich then Marseille, then taking a bus to railstation, where we spent half an hour trying to get a public transport ticket for one week, then changing to Métro, then another bus to the Mazargues Village.
The owner of this small hostel is very friendly and smoky ( too many cigarettes :p). He's planning a hostel in Philippines and will leave France forever as soon as he saves enough money. 'The country ( France) is beautiful, but I don't like the people,' he says. Hahah....First time I hear that from a French.
In my heart it's always contradictory when I think about where in the world to settle down in the future. At the beginning when I came to Europe, I always missed so much the rich variety of Taiwanese cuisine. But once you get used to cold salad and bread, food is actually not the big problem, besides one can always cook at home. On the other hand, you can't get the best French cheese and the original Hungarian salami along with good and also cheap wine in Taiwan. But there's always a feeling of something missing... I think it's the warmth in people and in the life style from hometown.
It's really a hard choice between "Taiwanese snacks ( 小吃) + insects and air pollution" vs. "lack of hot delicious food and warm people + the best drinking mineral water from tap + no cockroaches in the whole country(okay, maybe I exaggerate just a little bit, but I haven't seen one in Austria)."
And this is just one of the very simple comparison on the surface.
P.S.
(1) I went there again after I wrote this article and I saw only girls....maybe this guy only takes reservations from girls??
(2) I was wondering that I've only seen such beautiful beach in Maldives, turns out it's really in Maldives....The most beautiful country in the world in my opinion at the age of 10....unfortunately I haven't had the chance to visit there.
Here's a link:
www.visitmaldives.com/Photo_gallery/index.php
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