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2004-03-28
All aboard the Night Train!

6:24 p.m.

Today we returned from Cannes. Talk about a crazy trip. Even I would not plan something as psycho as this. First, as mentioned previously, we took the night train Wednesday night to arrive in Cannes Thursday morning. Supposed to be 12 hour train ride, which is bad enough, especially when we only have seats and not beds. Add to that Munir Jojo, about whom we half-jokingly made tranquilizer dart comments. But the kicker was that there was an accident of some sort, and as a result, the train moved probably only about 20 miles in the first three hours. So, we ended up being on the train for a nice, quick 15 hours. Suck! It was beginning to feel like a Lord of the Flies scenario by the end of it.

We finally, finally arrived at our hotel cum bungalows, which were actually pretty cool. Beth, Brooke, and I shared a room. We ran in, Brooke took a quick shower, and Beth and I headed off to lunch. It was okay, especially since it was free. Brooke arrived, and in between courses, Beth managed a shower. I took one after, and then we met up at 2:30 to walk to Alcatel.

There are enough French speakers that there was a French tour, and Beth and I opted for that. Margot and Brooke also came along on that one, but unintentionally, I think. It was interesting, and I understood most of it. We had some history of the company, shown the clean rooms where they were working on satellites, their giant thermal-testing oven, and some models of the satellites that they built.

We had the evening off so some of us decided to go check out downtown Cannes until we discovered that it would cost ~30 Euros to get there. No thanks! So Mark, Oliver, Esa, Beth, Will and I ended up playing cards in Oliver's room.

Also had Friday morning off, so managed to get a taxi into town for ~20 Euros and walked around Cannes for a while. Stuck my hand in the Mediterranean. Saw a pair of 950 Euro shoes. Crazy. Ran into some other classmates. Around 12:30, some of us decided to head back for lunch at the hotel. (Others rued this decision later when our dinner "buffet" turned out to be 2 pizzas for 50 people, plus some bread, cheese, chicken wings, and an apple struedel dessert. Not exactly filling.)

After lunch, we piled onto the bus to go to the observatory in Cannes. That was awesome, it was built in the 1880's and partially designed by Eiffel. Our guide was really cool, too. Unfortunately, I had expected it to be warmer than it was and therefore a little unprepared. As were most of us. I even gave my outer sweater away because some people didn't have anything.

Then to Astrorama (yes, that's its actual name) where we had our above-mentioned buffet dinner and were given a neat presentation on the history of the solar system, visit to their mini-planetarium, as well as the chance to see Saturn and some moons through the telescope, Jupiter, Venus, the Moon, and sunspots. Actually learned quite a bit!

Saturday morning we got up for a visit to another observatory, this one in Nice. We stopped for lunch on the way, and then Will, Brooke, Nick, and I took off to quickly explore a mini cave that Will had found; the others climbed aboard the bus and when we were done and ran back to catch it, the bus driver kept stopping, then going once we got close, stopping agian, and so on. Finally, everyone managed to get on but me (I had eaten WAY too much for lunch in anticipation of not having dinner, so I was having a hard time running) and the bus was going and Will stood at the door and was yelling, 'Come on, Cari, you can do it, you can do it!' I grabbed his hand and jumped on the bus. I felt like a stunt woman in some movie. Everyone was laughing, including us.

Anyway, the Nice observatory was really interesting, though I have to say maybe not as interesting as Cannes, and definitely much colder!!! Again, I'd given my outer sweater away.

Finally got back on the bus and headed to the train station. An hour to kill, so everyone scattered to look for some food. We got on the train around 8:30, and about 8:30 this morning, we arrived back in Strasbourg. After a ~4 hour nap, I ate lunch, and then decided to come in.

So, that's my weekend. And y'all think it's just me that's crazy.

But, no rest for the wicked. Bright and early Wednesday morning it's off to Russia. We get back on the 4th, Yuri's Night.

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