I am sitting in Sunny’s apartment in Metz, France right now, enjoying a beautiful night. I can feel my life so acutely right now. I sit here listening to music written about Ieper in Belgium, about WWI. Soon I will be going there, hopefully studying with a document centre and museum on the Christmas Truce. I have eaten well today. A beautiful French breakfast, eggs with tomato and goat cheese, sausage, and baguette. An amazing pasta for dinner. I got to surprise one of my best friends for her birthday (yea ignore the compliments if you read this), and I spent the rest of my day researching, reading, hanging out with sunny, running through an old Nazi internment camp converted into a park known as Fort Queuleu, then lifting weights. http://www.fort2metz.fr/wp-content/gallery/fort-queuleu/Fort_Queuleu_007.jpg It has been a great day. I sit here on a beautiful French night and…. feel life as it is. It is nice to step back from the hustle and bustle of traveling alone. Booking hostels, hunting for the cheapest train tickets. All the stress makes you forget: Life here in France has been beautiful. Tuesday I go to Belgium. Wednesday, London. I will miss you France.
So at the Villa we have theme nights. I was around for three of them: 80’s Night, Drag Night, and Anything but clothes night. here are a few pictures of said nights. They were so hilarious.
80’s night goes of course to The Jenko Show. Roller skates…. amazing.
Drag Night goes out to his majesty Brendan: the guy? in red. Man he went all out
Anything but clothes night… I’m gonna say goes out to me. I was so proud of my costume. you’ll see.
La Fête de Musique. Amazing night. After the concert at the Villa we headed downtown and basically partied all night! Listened to music, danced, fought through crowds, fought through fights. Huge street fights that night. It was really crazy. My friend Georgia and I ended up in the middle of a crazy street fight, that invovled a bottle being thrown at me and smashed on my back. Legendary night.
Fun Pictures. Check it out. Sorry for the blur, it was crazy.
This is Hannes. He is Belgian. He stole this shirt from my stuff one night after vomiting on his own shirt. I let him keep it. So one day we were twins. What a guy…
Les Alps: partie deux
À Tende: NOISY PLAYING IS PROHIBITED! But foam balls are totally tolerated…. not problem there. I mean its just foam balls. We’re not trying to dictate your life here or anything…
Les Alps: partie une
So at the Villa we have theme nights and goofy event things once a week to spice up life here and offer a better time to the guests. These things range from pajama party night, to 80’s night, to drag night, to wear anything but clothes night… yes I was involved in these in someway or another. However. My favorite event so far has been for the Fete de Musique. The Fete de Musique is an international music festival all across europe. Here at the villa we decided to warm people up for the big night of music in town with a small concert here at the villa.
It was so great. A bunch of the staff, a few guests, and a few of the in-betweens like my good friend Geoff, played a couple hour long set of musique. The staff asked if i would play a song. Of course I agreed. It started with one. Then they asked if I would play two. Then later in the week a 20 minute set… then a 30 minute set. So eventually I ended up playing 6 songs overall.
The Villa Fete opened with a staff member Phil who rocked out some chill jams on the acoustic. Then two aussies on staff played and sang together. Then my Geoff hit us with some stuff. Then I got to play. I started with Joan by Butch Walker, then moved to These Days by the one and only Fountains of Wayne. Then I played guitar for a guest named Meredith as she sang Far Away by Ingrid Michaelson. It is an adorable song and she has a nice voice so that was fun. I met her like an hour before the Fete and we got the song together. It was really fun. Then I had asked her if she would sing the female harmony in Bob Dylan’s One More Cup of Coffee with me. She agreed too and we totally rocked it out. It was actually quite beautiful I thought. Then I closed with Butch Walker’s Atlanta. Atlanta is one of the songs that means the most to me right now. Probably one of the songs that means the most to me of any song I have ever heard. If you read this… look it up. It is beyond beautiful. So raw, real, and many other good r words i am sure.
Then I was gonna leave the stage… but the staff insisted that I sing this song from a musical I was writing forever ago that I sang for them a few nights before. So I did… and people really really loved it. It was weird. People were in the bar singing a song I wrote later that night. It was amazing.
The next morning at breakfast I found someone singing Atlanta by Butch Walker. That made my week.
So a couple weekends ago I had the entire weekend off, and I just really needed to get away. Life at the Villa is awesome, but it is also loud, and drunk. The main thing is that 90% of the people here are guests, so they are vacation. Everyone and again it is a bit draining, so I hoped on a train to the Alps.
Had talked to my wonderful friend Nadi about this little village in the French/Italian Alps known as Tende. It is an old medieval town in the Roya River Valley. So I thought I would check it out. 20 euros for an aller/retour billet (round trip ticket). TO the train. This was my first trip on the trains so I was pretty excited. I took a train to Breil-Sur-Roya and had to switch over to the Italian train line to get to Tende. Once on the Italian train, the rest of the ride was without a doubt through the alps. It was so beautiful and amazing. Such a fun introduction to the alps.
After a couple of hours on trains I headed arrived in Tende. Once there I headed straight to the Bureau de Tourisme. I wanted to hike to the Vallée de Merveilles. It is a site in the Mercantour National Park where ancient societies left carvings and art on the rocks that were scraped smooth by ancient glaciers. It is supposed to be one of the coolest things on the French italian border. So I went to ask how to get there. Bad News: It is a 5 and a half hour hike to the Vallée de Merveilles from Tende…. and! There was snow waiting for me there if i chose to do said hike. This made it a definite no. Though I could walk for 5 and a half hours and be exhausted, I was not equipped to endure snow. So I had to think fast of something new to do. Went next door to the Musée de Merveilles to check out some of the things I could have seen if I did go to the Vallée.
After a great walk through some interesting history in the Musée, I was walking around Tende when I saw:
CAMPING —->
I was like victory! I followed the sign and found a campground right on the banks of the Roya! Booked a camp site and set up my tent. Once camp was set. I hit the sites of Tende. I grabbed a quick bite to eat… more or less a french version of a Corndog I think. It was a pastry with cheese and a hotdog inside. It was awesome! After this quick snack, I began exploring all the museums, churches, and sites of Tende. It was a wonderful couple hours seeing all the medieval town turned into a little something more. I walked through the down town, the cathedral, and through the houses and gardens planted all along the mountain sides. It is difficult to describe the beauty of this place. The pictures to come will help. Then, I spotted a rope bridge high in the Alps… It became my target.
I started to make my way up the hills in the town and wound up in the old Tende Cemetery. Beautiful. There I found the remains of the old Chateau of the feudal lord who had ruled over the medieval village. Also found an unmarked grave with fresh roses planted in it. I stood there for a moment wondering who this person was, and if anyone missed them, or even if there was anyone to miss them. A single rose bud had rolled down away from the grave. I picked it up. I have been spreading its pedals around France.
After the grave yard I wound up at the base of an intense hiking trail known as the Via Ferrat. So I thought… Awesome. Lets do this. Hit the trail. It was a wonderful hike all the way up to the rope bridge I noticed before… that was thankfully closed without a guide and proper climbing equipment. Cause it was scary as crap. The end of the hike was more of a climb and was quite intense. There were stairs carved into the mountain, and steel cables to hold onto for safety. It was a ton of fun. I got all the way to the top of the mountain. The view was simply spectacular. The second I came up on the top of the mountain, I became instantly exposed to how strong the wind up at 2500m can be. It was beautiful…. but freezing. So I began the climb down so I could make it to my camp site before sunset.
At the camp site I ate a humble dinner of apples and bread and then read a Sarah Ruhl play and fell asleep. I awoke in the night quite cold and stuffed myself into a couple of trash bags for extra warmth. That did the trick and I slept so soundly till the next morning at 10. I had gone to bed around 9:30… so i slept alot….
Next morning got up, had a breakfast surprisingly the same as my dinner, and packed up my camp site. Said goodbye to the Roya River and started another quick hike up to the remains of an old fort on a much smaller mountain than the day before. This was a quick couple hour hike round trip and was just peaceful and fun. The weather wasn’t looking great, so I went ahead and headed back to the train station. The train station in Tende is more of a train platform… not a lot going for it. After a wonderful conversation in French with an old French traveler I headed back to Breil-Sur-Roya… where my train to Nice was missing…. So then I rode to Ventimiglia, Italy. New train. Then to Monaco. New train. Then home sweet home to Nice.
Man. What an adventure.
Mon petit déjeuner aujourd’hui.
Deux oeufs dans pain grillé avec la saucisse, le fromage chevre, et la tomate. Et bien sur… du café.
Two eggs in a basket, with a slice of smoke sausage, goat cheese, and half a cherry tomato on each. Some buttered toast, with strawberry jam. And of course… coffee.
Pictures from my night out.
