Hurdling the Language Barrier

Over the past several days, I've become more and more comfortable speaking the language here.  And I've also found that others often speak my language, in the most unexpected situations!!

On Friday evening after dinner a few of us decided to head over to "le Palais de la Musique et des Congres" to watch "l'orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg," whose tickets were relatively inexpensive, since we have student discount cards.  Although the concert was short (about an hour), it was phenomenal.  It was a good size orchestra that played pieces I didn't recognize; however, as anyone who listens to music will tell you, there is no language barrier in classical music!  It was really nice to watch and listen, and the coolest part (aside from the tympani player who was crazy awesome) was the french horn soloist who went for 10 minutes at a time by himself!  Never heard such an elaborate solo on that instrument before.

On the subject of music and language, later that evening we went out to a French "discotheque" (dance club).  It was interesting, to say the least.  I think that French dance clubs are based more on drinking than dancing; there was less risky dancing and more just jumping around in a big mob (actually, the night life here in general is centered more around bars than dancing, since the drinking age is so low).  But anyways, what was funny was that they played a lot of popular American music, like what we would listen to in the weight room (here and at home in College Park).  These French people love our music!  Britney Spears came on (wooo there you go, Ash and Danielle) and everyone went just about crazy; it was really funny.  And afterwards, we were approached by these three Canadian girls, who were SO relieved that someone they found FINALLY spoke English.  Admittedly they were pretty tipsy so they were probably a little overdramatic (just, a *tad* :P), but it was amusing nonetheless to unexpectedly find so much English in a French club.

Yesterday a group of us rented bikes and biked over the border into Kehl, Germany.  Once again, the language changed, and interestingly enough we found that more people spoke English than French there (well, of course most people spoke German, but in that category I'm about as useless as a potato).  Kehl was nice, although we didn't have too much time to explore.  We sat down and ate a nice lunch (potatoes, sausage, and sauerkraut of course) followed by this OMG-AMAZING (and cheap) icecream (mine was truffle and coffee flavored, need I say more?) and shopped around a bit before heading back.  Then in the evening we ate at an Irish Pub (they served gorgonzala burgers there and we were all craving red meat) where of course, all of the waitresses spoke English.  We watched the ManU vs. Barcelona soccer game inside the pub (those Europeans are fo' serious about their soccer), which was all in English.  So the past two days, the English language has been following us everywhere!  Lucky for me, I get plenty of practice speaking French at the appartment I'm living in, since my host family only speaks French.  Also, at INSA, where I intern, everyone speaks French, and we even get to eat in the student cafeteria (where of course, no one is really speaking English at all!)  So it's still a good mix.

Right now I'm about to head out for a group trip- we're going wine tasting, oh la la!  Hopefully I can post more pictures later!

Becky