Ma Mère et Moi à Grenoble

My last week in Grenoble was pretty standard as far as move out weeks go; I said goodbye to some amazing people, which was tough, but it’s easier when we’ve already made plans to see each other again :) It was weird being the last one from API Intensive (at least not in the extended program) to leave, but luckily Maguy and Darrel and Zainab were still around so I didn’t go completely insane with boredom and loneliness haha I packed up everything and was all ready to move out Friday morning before meeting my mom at the train station in Grenoble. Marie came to help me move out and even dropped me off at a tram stop so I could get into town; unfortunately, France was still France, and the public transportation workers had gone on strike for the 4th or 5th time this semester. Normally, there were reduced trams/buses, but there was always something running; of course, they would go on a complete, debilitating strike the day I was carrying 3 months’ worth of belongings through town. I called Marie, and Sarah came and drove me into town; it ended up being a good thing though because I got to tell Sarah goodbye too. The person who got the shortest end of the stick with the strike was my mom; for the 2 days she was in Grenoble there was a strike and then a national holiday and therefore not a single bus or tram running while she was there, so she couldn’t see any of the things outside of city center that were out of walking distance (i.e my residence and school). Luckily we were staying in city center and could walk most places, even if it took a little longer than expected. I dropped my bags off at the hotel and ran some errands until close to time for my mom’s train to arrive. It was so good to see her again; I was so excited that she had finally gotten to Europe and couldn't wait to share my “home” with her. We got checked into the hotel and set out to wander around Grenoble; there aren’t a ton of touristy things to do in Grenoble, so 2 days was an adequate amount of time. I gave her a tour of what I knew to see, and we did the téléphérique up to the Bastille both days (it was cloudy the first, so we went the second in hopes that it would be sunnier. It wasn’t, but it was still amazing).

Overall, it was really nice to be able to let my mom experience at least a little bit of what I had for 3 months; my mom tried different French foods (croque monsieur, crêpes, Nutella coffees, paninis) and saw some of the cultural things I had talked about first-hand. It was also cool for me to keep using my French in regular conversation with people and to show my mom how much French I had learned. We got a lot done in such a short amount of time (even though, like I said, there isn’t that much to do in Grenoble), partly because my mom is a champion of jet lag; seriously, I don’t know how she did it, but I think it definitely made things easier for her not having to sleep instead of sight-seeing. Our bus left at 10 pm, but we weren’t sure what time our train to Lyon would be, so we got up to the train station with our bags around 5 (and so began the battle with our luggage). We bought our tickets (after a little confusion and some less-than-friendly workers) and ate dinner before our train left around 6:30. We got to Lyon about 30 minutes before our train was to leave, and even though we were really stressed about whether or not we would find the bus depot, we got work done and found it in no time. We got as settled as you can on a bus and slept on and off through the night (I think I slept better than my mom did) despite the bus driver’s decision to put The Wolfman on – loudly and in Spanish. We were awakened when we got to the Spanish border and had to get our passports checked by France and then Spain; we were about the only people who didn’t get questioned (ah, the power of a United States passport), which was just as well because we didn’t speak enough French to discuss border crossings and such and didn’t speak enough Spanish to do much of anything besides order in a restaurant. We made it to the Barcelona Nord train station around 6 am, but I'll continue with Barcelona in the next post :)