La Montagne

Grenoble is the place to be in France when it comes to hiking since it lies in a valley in the Alps. In fact, there is a saying in Grenoble, "Every street ends in a mountain." As such, Vanessa and I have been several times. Last time, we went up to the Bastille, which is a fortress built on the hill near Grenoble. It is about 2.5 km from town and it makes for a decent hike. The view from the top is amazing; you can see the entire city of Grenoble and its neighboring townships.

Today, we first hiked up to the Bastille. From there we headed to St. Martin le Vinoux, another 5 km hike. The weather has been more or less the same since we arrived here - comfortable in the morning, warm and slightly humid in the afternoons. We tried to leave early, but morning aren't exactly my thing, so we left around 10. As we were climbing to the Bastille, the sun started coming out, making for a tiring walk. But we are warriors, and we would never ever ever ever give up and our hike! We were going to get to St. Martin le Vinoux if it was the last thing we would do! So we climbed another 1 km hill, which had at the very most one step down hill. We soon summitted and came to a memorial for the soldiers who died in the Alps. Again, we were winded, but persistence is, and has always been, our modus operandi, so quitting was not an option. We hiked another kilometer and noticed our trail started going down hill. We discussed our options and came to the conclusion that every step downhill would later be a step uphill on the return trip, so we gave up and returned home.

Le Marché Ouvert

So one of my favorite things in Grenoble is the amazing food. But to save some euros (because we are poor college students) Edward has been cooking dinner. That isn't to say the food is any less amazing, on the contrary, it has been quite delicious. That is mostly due to le marché ouvert or essentially, a farmer's market. Let me just say, these markets are like heaven to me. So far we have discovered two markets and both are simply amazing. The wide selection of incredibly fresh vegetables and fruits makes me happy. I am in peach heaven right now. To give you some perspective on the freshness and natural goodness, we bought fresh broccoli about five days ago and had it last night for dinner and it was already past its prime, but still delicious. I don't even mind going for groceries every couple of days. Edward definitely doesn't mind going every few days because he loves to meander through them and ponder what we should eat for dinner. I wish there were more of these markets in California (and as cheap as in Grenoble). I will definitely be taking advantage of these markets while I am here as I will sorely miss them after returning home.

Chartreuse

EAP, the study abroad program we are in, has been working pretty hard to keep us liquored up the entire time we are here. We drank the first dinner together and it was almost nonstop for the first few days. This is probably reflective of the lax social rules concerning alcohol in France, but as an American it's still somewhat weird drinking wine with professors and program administrators.

For our first full day excursion as a group, we all went to the Chartreuse region. It is an area up in the mountains near Grenoble, and it is known mainly for one thing, the distilled liquor by the same name.

But before getting us all liquored up, they took us to the monastery where the alcohol was first produced. This was way up in the Alps, which provided us amazing views of the unaltered terrain. The monastery wasn't, as they call it, my cup of tea. The only thought on my mind during the entire visit was, "who is dumb enough to dedicate themselves to a life of silence and solitude?"

After leaving the monastery, we headed to the distillery, where the Chartreuse is now made. We walked through and saw all the pretty, shiny machinery that now makes the chartreuse. All pretty boring stuff. Then we got to try the Chartreuse, which sounds like fun, but it's not. It's pretty much the nastiest thing to ever touch my tongue. Vanessa likes to point out that she was smart and didn't get the Chartreuse, and instead got some fruity raspberry alcohol which tasted pretty good. I think that it was pretty lame, since we're in the Chartreuse region.

The Cameras

I bought Canon Rebel XTi to shoot pictures for this trip. It came with a kit lens, which I highly recommend you NOT get. It's pretty useless so you might as well save yourself $75 and put it toward a better lens. But I'm stuck with it because it's the only one I have and there's no way I'm buying one here, as the exchange rate sucks pretty bad and good lenses are expensive enough as it is.

So most pictures you see will be taken with the XTi. The only exceptions will be if Vanessa uses her camera, which is a Canon SD750, or I use my point and shoot, the SD1000 (which is exactly the same as the 750, except the 750 has a bigger screen on the back).

My photography skills are pretty raw, but hopefully they will develop as this trip goes along. I've been snapping pictures like nobody's business. I think I took over 1000 photos in less than a week.

CERN

I realize that these posts are incredibly anachronistic, but you will have to deal until my posts catch up to the current date, because I'm just writing about whatever is on my mind.

So for those of you who do not know, my dad is currently working at Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire also known as CERN (it used to be called Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, which is where the C in CERN comes from). CERN is the site for the Large Hadron Colider (LHC) which is the next generation particle accelerator. The project my dad is working on is called ATLAS. It is the largest of the six major experiments which are being conducted at the LHC and is designed to measure a very broad range of signals.

The amount of engineering going on for this project is enormous. I didn't have the opportunity to see the actualy detector, as entrance is extremely limited, but there are so many detectors, it is ridiculous. Just to give perspective, the detector will put out approximately 1 petabyte/second of raw data. And it's not as if these parts can be purchased at your local Radio Shack. Almost all these are designed and manufactured specifically for this experiment.

And to make it even more ridiculous, after assembling all the parts, they must lower it 100 meters underground, where the LHC actually resides. This requires two specialized cranes, each rated for up to 140 tons. Moreover, there are instruments that are longer than the length of the hole in which they must descend. So the engineers are forced to tilt the instrument, lower it 100 meters with just a few centimeters clearance from the walls on all four sides, then straighten it out underground. Simply put, ridiculous.

Driving There

Traveling with my dad always entails taking back roads instead of main highways. This has grown significantly since his purchase of a GPS system, which guarantees that we will never be too lost. Sometimes, this can lead to spending hours behind a tractor on a winding two lane country road. Other times, it can lead to finding a hidden site that would not be discovered any other way. And fortunately our trip from Geneva to Grenoble fell into the latter category.

We inputted our destination into the GPS and instructed it to avoid toll roads (basically any major highway). We left around 09h00, meandering our way through the country side. The scenery was simply beautiful. It was green rolling hills dotted with prototypical European farm houses; the Alps functioned as the backdrop.

After about an hour of driving, we crossed the Rhône for the first time. The road crosses the river a couple of times. Looking back, I wish we had stopped at the first crossing. There was a small town which looked nice, but we drove through without stopping. Fortunately about thirty minutes later, we came across a beautiful town called Chanaz. The town sits on a canal which connects to the Rhône and caters to French tourists. The French usually take a one month vacation every year, and many families enjoy camping, and the area around Chanaz is perfect for this. We meandered around the town for a good hour or so and then continued on our way.

As you may know, hunger attacks Vanessa as fast and as hard as a cheetah striking its prey. And we soon heard the grumblings of her stomach over the hum of the old Renault engine. So we stopped at a roadside restaurant, which again caters to French campers, and struck up a conversation with the guy at the table next to us. He recommended the jambon and the andouillette. I had the andouillette, which was grilled. I found it quite delicious, but Vanessa couldn’t get over the smell.

We finished our meal and headed on our way. We drove through the Alps for another hour or so and then into Grenoble. Seeing Grenoble, which is in a valley in the middle of the Alps, from above was absolutely stunning. I’ve already taken many photos, but I’m sure there will be more to come in the next couple of months, so stay tuned. In any case, we arrived around 14h00 and settled into our hotel in Grenoble, where we’ve been staying since. If you do happen to need to drive from Geneva to Grenoble (or Lyon) and also happen to have a GPS to keep you from getting lost, I hope you consider driving through the country side. It is incredibly beautiful and you will see things you probably wouldn’t have traveling any other way.

L’Arrivée

Our trip has finally begun. =) So we landed in Frankfurt on Sunday morning, local time, and proceeded to what we were told was our gate for our connection to Geneva. And after standing around, then sitting around for a while, we started to wonder where everyone was, as there were no workers at the desk. We then eavesdrop on some people only to discover that they had changed the gate, and forgotten to inform us. So after scrambling to find the right gate and get our boarding passes, we finally board the plane to Geneva. I have decided European cities are so much more beautiful than American cities. After about 14 hours of traveling and going forward nine hours, we finally arrived in Geneva!

An Introduction

I am studying abroad in France for the fall 2008 semester at the University of Grenoble. It is difficult to quantify how excited I am to study in a foreign country, but to give some perspective, I have been discussing the idea since at least middle school, more than eight years ago. I will be traveling with my girlfriend, Vanessa. I intend for this to be a journal of my/our adventures, to be shared with our friends and family. Hopefully, this blog will allow you enjoy our extended stay in France. I will attempt to update this as often as possible, with as many photos as possible.