Twenty-Three in Chambéry

So, as you can see, this is my first post with an English title, but only because it rhymes and I couldn't think of anything clever in French.  It's also an incredibly late post, considering my birthday was October 24th.. so a lot has happened since then, but it must not be forgotten!


This year was the second year (consecutively, as well) I spent my birthday away from home.  Last year's celebrations in London set the bar quite high for birthdays abroad, so I felt I had to do something more exciting than staying in Belley at least.  So Iris and I decided to spend the day in Chambéry, a city about a 50-minute bus ride away from Belley.  As it was a Wednesday and Belley doesn't have its own train station, we made do by taking a 2 euro (4 roundtrip) bus from the main road in Belley straight to Chambéry.  Also because it was Wednesday, the students don't have any classes in the afternoon, so neither do we!


My birthday started early with a class at 8 am and one at 9.  I woke up early to this nice little note from Iris:

 

My classes went well and I didn't have to say "you better be good today and listen because it's my birthday."  We also ate at the cafeteria as usual (you can never beat a meal for 2 euros) and Wednesdays are usually the best days for good meals there, so it was a lucky day.  After lunch we hopped on the small bus and of course there were some of my students with us, so that was a little bizarre to see them outside of class.  When we got to Chambéry we decided to head to the city center to do some shopping at H&M and, by chance, we ended up running into the same students while we were shopping and they finally said "hello" to me.  I always love when I see my students outside of class and they make a small effort in English.


Chambéry:

Palais de Justice

Hotel de Ville

After shopping and walking around the city for a while we decided to stop somewhere to get some birthday ice cream.  I got nutella, pistachio and cookies. Words cannot describe the happiness this brought:

After that we decided to check out the castle to see if we could get a better view of the city, perhaps a panorama even.  On the way I noticed a Belgian beer shop, and, since many of my favorite beers are Belgian, I decided it'd be nice to stop in.  There was no one else in the store besides us and the nice saleslady.  I asked her about my favorite beer, Tripel Karmeliet, and asked if she had any similar recommendations since there were so many options.  I told her I used to live in Lille which is so close to Belgium that I was lucky enough to have such easy access to their great beers.  In the middle of this conversation she asked us which region in France we were from.  Ah, it's such a good moment when someone doesn't realize you're a foreigner right away.  She was impressed by how well we spoke and really enjoyed talking to me about beer.  I learned a lot of French words for describing different types of beer, and in the end I bought a bottle of Triplet Karmeliet which cost me as much as a glass of it would cost me at one of the Belgian restaurants in Milwaukee.  Such a good birthday present to myself.

As we stepped out of the small beer shop, the castle appeared right in front of us.

 Unfortunately tours of the castle were already over, so we saw a small part of the exhibition/history of the castle that we could before hopping on our bus back to Belley.

Back in Belley after dinner we were discussing our day with our neighbor Marc who works at the Lycee Pro.  He asked us if we saw the wild boars that were running wild in the city center that afternoon.  We were shocked.  Wild boars?  In the city center?  How could we have missed THAT?  Well, apparently we did... and we were just an hour or so late luckily because they ended up shooting them and donating the meat.


So those were my exciting birthday adventures.  Next up is what I did with my two week break and Thanksgiving!