FAQs about me

Frequently Asked Questions about Lakshman

What are you doing with your life?

I just graduated college with a Bachelors of Arts in June. I will start my Masters of Arts program in September. I have been interning fulltime over the summer at a nonprofit law firm.

What was your college degree in?

I was in an interdisciplinary program in college – meaning I created my own course of study. My two areas of concentration were South Asian Studies and Urban Planning. These resulted in a Bachelors of Arts degree. I had other specializations throughout college like food justice studies and Geographic Information Science (GIS).

That doesn’t sound very useful. Tell me that you’re at least going to do something worthwhile for your Masters.

I'm getting a Master's in Sociocultural Anthropology. The project I will work on specifically is ‘Revitalizing Millet Production in South Asia’.

Where are you doing this Masters program? What is this project about?

The program is at the University of Manitoba. This means I am moving to Winnipeg, Canada in the coming days. The project will look examine ways to increase production and consumption of small millets such as finger millet, pearl millet, ragi, sorghum, and other varieties of millet (whichever are grown in our research sites). We will specifically focus on the sociological conditions of production, actual production techniques, documenting indigenous agricultural knowledges, policy measures to support millet consumption in the markets and Public Distribution System (PDS), and more.

Why this one in particular? What will it help you accomplish?

This is the only graduate program I applied to. I have a number of good reasons to apply this one in particular:

1.      I am actively seeking to take my food justice work from New York City back to my ‘roots’ in India – specifically in the Northern Coastal Andhra region, where my family has farming roots. This project is a good launching pad for me.

2.      The project has two research sites two to three hours away from my parents’ native towns, Salur & Bobbili. The research sites are Dumbriguda in Araku Valley (in Andhra Pradesh) and other villages in the Koraput District (in Orissa).

3.      I would be hard-pressed to find a program or research project that is conducting food sovereignty research in the same geographical area that I am interested in. And if I didn’t, creating a brand new project in another university under another professor would require more work, whereas this is practically set up for me.

4.      This is a coursework and research combined program – which gives me the best of both worlds of learning. The research part of it will allow me to go to India for four months.

5.      This project is a large research grant funded by the International Development Research Council (IDRC) of Canada (think USAID [USA] or DFID [UK] equivalent in Canada).

6.      I’m actively seek to live outside of America, and while Canada isn’t that different from the United States, it’s a step in the right direction.

7.      The University of Manitoba is a public university and studying there will continue my commitment to public education institutions (to whatever extent that I have a commitment to any educational institution).

8.      Last but not least – and this is a very good reason – this is a funded Masters program. This means they will give me money to do my Masters.

Like I mentioned in the first point, this program will help me launch into working in India. A brief synopsis of my professional and activist interests: I began getting involved in movements to create healthier, fair food sources to New Yorkers. As a native New Yorker, I am very passionate about justice in my city. Soon, I realized that one of the best and most inevitable ways to continue my work of creating a healthier, fairer food system is growing food itself. This is not only to feed me but feed those around me. This process will also teach me the basics of survival: you need food to survive; it’s a basic necessity. (Had I known in high school that a Bachelors in Agriculture was possible and the importance of it, I may have studied this instead. Growing up in one of the largest metropolitan regions in the world, I did not have this exposure.) Instead of working on farms in upstate New York and in America – where I have no connection to land and agriculture – I decided in my final semesters of college to shift my focus to Andhra Pradesh, where I do have agricultural roots and familial history and ties to land. As such, this Masters program came at the perfect time for me to learn about agriculture and test the waters a little bit.

What are sort of career or profession are you thinking of?

As for a profession, I’m not really sure yet. These sorts of interests don’t have a cut and clear path of what comes next or even how to name it. I would generally like to hope that anything I do in the future has some sort of justice-oriented slant to it. I would like to work in India for a few years. The paths are many from here: I can go on to be a professor, I can work for NGOs, I can be a farmer, I can start a workers’ co-operative – anything. We’ll see what the future holds.

Why didn’t you apply to other universities? Why can’t you do this in America?

1.      I didn’t apply to other American universities because I didn’t take the GREs (the graduate school entrance exams). I didn’t take these because I'm too cheap, I didn't prepare for them, and I really hate and am losing faith in standardized testing.

2.      Unless I entered a Ph.D. program, it would be very difficult for me to find funding to continue my studies. I am not prepared academically nor mentally to do a five to seven year Ph.D. program.

3.      If I don’t get funding, I will have to take out loans to finance my higher education. This is firmly against my current financial ideals: I don’t like to spend money I don’t have on hand at the moment. For this reason, I would not be able to do a Master’s program in America.

How did you find out about this program?
The internet. I'm on way too many listservs/mailing lists to count and thus far, it's proved useful. There was an ad on this jobs listserv that called for Masters students for Food Security in South Asia research. It was perfect for me! I found out about a lot of the different opportunities that strongly impacted my life just by surfing the net and getting various emails in my inbox. For those who have access to the internet - especially on their smart phones - there is no reason to be in the dark about opportunities.

So what will the Masters program be like?

I will take three semesters of classes this Fall (September to December), Winter (January to April), and next Fall. I will go out into the field in late December of 2013. I will come back to Winnipeg in 2014 to write my thesis. If all goes well, I should graduate in October 2014 or February 2015.

Where is Winnipeg? Is it a big city? Is it very cold? Have you ever visited?

Winnipeg is nearly at the geographic center of the entire North American continent. It's right by North Dakota and Minnesota. It’s a mid-sized city (though all cities seem small compared to New York) with a population of about 700,000. It’s supposed to be the coldest city in the world with a population of more than 600,000. We’ll see how cold it will get when I get there; I've never visited. I think it’s a little ironic that I’m going to such a cold place first in an attempt to transition to Andhra.

Are you excited about the move?
To be honest, I'm excited the move but not about more school. I'm always up for going to new places and experiencing new things and so in that regard, this next step is perfect. Winnipeg is a mid-sized Midwest city - something I've never experienced before. I'm also in the process of immigrating, so that's a whole different experience in itself. But I'm definitely not looking forward to writing more papers and being a part of the university mill. My sentiments towards academia at this point most closely resemble this quote (from the book I'm reading now):

"If students are going to earn degrees, they've got to come up with dissertation topics. And since dissertations can be written about everything under the sun, the number of topics is infinite. Sheets of paper covered with words pile up in archives sadder than cemeteries, because no one ever visits them, not even on All Souls' Day. Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity." (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, page 102)

Why don’t you have Facebook? It’s easier to keep in touch.

I had Facebook for a while. I couldn’t deal with everyone knowing every personal detail of my life all the time. Yes, I know, I can control privacy settings and place limits on my usage. But email is a more personal way of reaching out to people; I thought of everyone on this email list individually.

Why don't you call people? What happened to using your phone? How come you never pick up?
I'll be honest: I'm a product of my generation. I like texting better. But honestly, I'd rather avoid the phone entirely. Maybe it's a self-induced pressure, but I totally get phone anxiety. I'm a little better with email. Sometimes. I'm best in person.

When are you coming to visit?
That depends on where you are. Most of my base is either in New York City/tri-state area or in Visakhapatnam/Hyderabad. I'll be back in New York very briefly for Christmas this year. I'll be in Vizag area next year for research. Both trips will be tight due to time constraints.

Roots

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Where my mom is from

Quick summary or stats

To say that I've been traveling a lot is an understatement...for my standards at least.

Out of the twenty weeks I spent in Europe, I've traveled for ten of those weeks. Seventy days. I've stayed and slept in twenty cities and towns. I've passed through a further eight.

I would say my best experiences were either Birmingham (UK), Padova (Italy), or Granada (Spain). Each had a slight and comparable shortcoming, so the tie is tight. But the main reason why these cities came to the top of my list is not because of the wondrous sights or beautiful architecture (indeed neither Padova nor Birmingham has either), but the people I met in those cities (because of couchsurfing). The experiences, the fun - they were simply unforgettable.

My worst experiences were in Manchester (UK) and Firenze (Italy). Let's just leave it at that.

I have couchsurfed on sixteen different couches in fourteen different cities and towns. Most of them are students. I have stayed with students who study: Latin American Studies (B.A.), Sociology [Security] (Ph.D.), Nursing, Photonics (Ph.D.), Politics & Economics (B.A.), Social Anthropology (B.A.), Mathematics (B.A.), Philosophy (B.A.), Human Resources/Office Administration, Radiology Technician, International Business (M.A.), Musicology (M.A.), Agriculture (B.A.), Communication (B.A.), International Development (M.A.), Medicine, Sociology [Pedophilia] (Ph.D.), and Computer Science/Information Technology (B.A.).

I haven't been in one town or city for two consecutive Saturdays since the beginning of February, with an exception of three weeks in March.

5/2 - London, UK
12/2 - Cork, Ireland
19/2 - Manchester, UK
27/2 - Inverness, UK
6/3 - London, UK
13/3 - London, UK
20/3 - London, UK
27/3 - Strasbourg, France
3/4 - Milan, Italy
10/4 - Bologna, Italy
17/4 - Barcelona, Spain
24/4 - Rota, Spain
1/5 - Madrid, Spain
8/5 - Paris, France
15/5 - London, UK
22/5 - Gent, Belgium
29/5 - Visakhapatnam, India

The cities or towns I've visited and the places I passed through:
Dublin 9/2 - 12/2
Cork 12/2 - 14/2
Kinsale 13/2
Birmingham 16/2 - 18/2
Manchester 18/2 - 21/2
Edinburgh 22/2 - 26/2
Inverness 26/2 - 27/2
Strasbourg 23/3 - 27/3
Toulouse 27/3 - 30/3
Avignon 30/3
Nice 30/3 - 3/4
Monaco 1/4
Milan 3/4
Padova 3/4 - 7/4
Venezia 4/4
Bologna 7/4 - 10/4
San Marino 10/4
Firenze 10/4 - 12/4
Roma 12/4 - 15/4
Mediterranean 15/4 - 16/4
Barcelona 16/4 - 19/4
Granada 20/4 - 23/4
Rota 23/4 - 27/4
Cadiz 25/4
Madrid 27/4 - 2/5
San Sebastian 2/5 - 4/5
Paris 4/5 - 12/5
Gent 21/5 - 23/5
Brussels 23/5

Granadan Life

It's very hard to be vegetarian in Spain. Today, I reached an all time low for food in Spain: barely cooked beans, lettuce and tomato for lunch (though the patatas alioli helped beforehand) and bread and curado cheese. But I did have some interesting sweets during the day: arroz con leche gelato and later, a rosco, a speciality of Cadiz for Semana Santa. But, come to think of it, I'm not really sure what I ate during Semana Santa itself.

I experienced my first Semana Santa, Easter celebrations in (southern) Spain, and it was all just a blur. This was mostly due to my extremely erratic sleep cycle: the first night in Granada was one of the most famous procesiónes of Semana Santa, La Procesión de la Gitanos. So essentially, every night during the week, Catholic brotherhoods or orders wear costumes, much like those worn by the Ku Klux Klan, and parade around town with the idols of Jesus Christ and Mother Mary (for my Telugu readers: Yesu Cristu ooregimpu). These are large figures on ornate platforms that are carried on the backs of about twenty four men (again for Telugu readers: pallakilaga) and guided through the streets by the people in the march. Anyway, so after the weekly CS Granada meeting, we headed over to see the start of the procesión. It started at around 12:30AM and lasted until 7:30AM, until the statue of Mother Mary was finally behind the gates of the Abbey of Sacromonte, a very famous monastery just outside of Granada. There are a few reasons why the procesión took so long. The first and primarily because the people carrying the pallaki had to take baby steps to move. It took about one minute to move one meter, if that. And they switched groups of men very half an hour or so. Secondly, because the abbey is up on a hill, SacreMONTE. Lastly, because they stopped every so often when someone sang a song or prayer. By the time Mother Mary went in, Adele, the Spanish aunty I met at the CS meeting, Serendipiti, the American study abroad student, and I were totally totally tired: from walking, standing, and lack of sleep. I went back to my room and crashed for the day.

The next day was pretty mellow. I thought I was going to have an exciting night out, but I met Rolando who suggested that I sleep early (around 8 or 9PM) and get up around 2AM to see the procesión silencio (silen because Jesus died on Friday), and then wait on line at Alhambra starting at 5AM. So, this is exactly what I did. And after waiting three hours on line to see one of the most visited sites in Spain, I was sorely disappointed. Here I was expecting the Moorish palace to be an exciting melange of religions and cultures, but really, it was simply shoddy, well, more like early, Muslim architecture. It sorely lacked symmetry, was not very big at all, and was overall kind of boring. Especially after seeing the wonders of Muslim architecture in India like the Taj Mahal and the surrounding palaces, Alhambra was really almost amateur. The only reason why I (and the others) stayed was because we went together as four couchsurfers traveling through Granada: Rolando from Costa Rica, Szidonia from Transylvania, Alex from Czech Republic (though I think he's Russian), and me from New York. I'm not going to lie, I didn't think we would get along at first, but either the disappointment of the Alhambra, the general time we spent together or the shitty windy, wet weather...or something, brought us together.

After the Alhambra, we were so tired that we went back to our hostals/hosts and slept for the rest of the day. And of course, because we slept during the day, we stayed up all night. Granted, it was a great night - I saw a fabulous drag show (in Spanish) and later, a real flamenco singer. The next morning, I took the 8:15 train to Sevilla and then another train to Cadiz to get to Rota, all on no sleep, as per usual. This is why my facebook status was: "Just as a heads up for those who will or want to visit Granada: don't expect to sleep much, especially between the hours of 12am and 8am."

¡Be ye warned!

Rollercoaster Ride

Couchsurfing is really like a rollercoaster ride. It really is.

I arrived to Granada this morning from Barcelona with absolutely no idea where I'll stay for the next three days. I finally got to an internet cafe after two hours of walking around and finding everything closed. As an aside, I´m not really a hardworker nor do I focus my energies on productivity. All the people close to me (my four family members, Neil, Ava, Nasim, etc.), they're all hard workers, but me, not so much. But even I was surprised at the Spanish work ethic! It was already 10AM and most stores still weren't open. I figured that if they opened at 11 and closed again at 2pm for siesta and re-opened in the evening from 5-8pm, they only work six hours a day...max!

Anyway, it's unfortunate that Granada had be my first real couchsurfing downfall. (I couldn't find a couch in Inverness, but it was only one night and it's wasn't terrible). After four successful and successive weeks of only couchsurfing (with Bologna being the exception - I stayed at my sister's friend's place), I simply could not find a couch in Granada. Nor could I find one in Sevilla, my next stop. I'm checking into a hostel later today. Kinda disappointed about that. I also decided this morning that I'm not going to Sevilla, but to Rota, a small town by Cadiz, on the Atlantic.

The thing about couchsurfing is that it really is a much better way to travel. For example, I made some awesome friends in Italy who were as hospitalable as family would be. Fabio, who cooked for me, gave up his room for me, took me partying and to his classes, in Padova and Matteo, who took me around Rome and explained all the history, cooked for me (too!), and drove me around, in Roma. My time is Barcelona was so wonderful that I'm thinking of even living there for a year or two. Kamil, my host, essentially said it's when I move to Barcelona (not if). Kamil and Paulina were such wonderful hosts and even better friends. So even if the city has nothing to offer, like Padova (or Birmingham), you can still have a great time.

It's totally bittersweet because you leave the city after a few days but you become good friends with your hosts. You're not really sure when you'll see them again. It's different with my friends from New York because I know I'll see them in eight months but...when will I go to Italy or Spain again?! And the downside is that if you're entirely dependent on couchsurfing like me and don't really know any other way to travel, it can kind of leave you flat faced when you don't have a couch. I suppose even if you do check into a hostel, you can still attend the couchsurfing events in the city or find fellow travelers, but it's not totally the same.

Oh CS. I'll definitely miss it when I spend the summer in Vizag...the community doesn't seem to be too big there. I definitely can't wait to go back to New York and start hosting people!

Toulouse, for some reason, reminds me of India...

It was very weird. I was in Toulouse for about two days (and three nights) and so much of the city reminded me of India: the gullies that were just large enough to let cars pass through, the open air staircases in apartment buildings, and so much more (i.e. I can't think of anything else for the moment, but take my word for it). But I'll be honest, from the beginning, Toulouse was a little difficult for me. I wasn't until the last few hours did I really get to enjoy it. I came to Toulouse purely on whim, like all the other cities I'm visiting. A classmate in my public space class mentioned that Toulouse was amazing in an offhand remark during class once and it stuck with me. So, I decided to see what was so awesome about it. I spent the day in the train from Strasbourg to Toulouse. I had lunch in Paris with Srilekha; Pavan & Harsha during my two hour stop over. The ride was really a tour de France: from Strasbourg to Paris to Toulouse on a train that went through Bordeaux. It was about a quarter to seven in the evening by the time I got to Toulouse. Then I realised that I didn't have the notebook where I noted my host's address. After fruitlessly trying to find an internet café, I phoned my friend Megan in London with my dying phone and asked her to get the details from my couchsurfing account. I suppose it was the difficulty of finding a couch in Toulouse that made the stay difficult to begin with: I sent out a lot of requests and got very few responses. Eventually, I did find someone, let's call him T, to host me for the last two nights in Toulouse, but the first night, Sunday night, was still couchless. Luckily, I got a few responses from the last minute request group and decided to stay with Stéphane for the one night. All was well - or so I thought. So I call Stéphane on my dying phone and he was sweet enough to come to the train station and pick me up. Stéphane's English wasn't very good at all, so I really got to practice my French. We got to his place, an awesome one bedroom apartment in the attic of a three story walk up, and went to a bar afterwards. After sleeping in the morning, Stéphane and I walked around the city and he showed me the sights. I was thoroughly shocked to see a peacock in Toulouse! I've only seen them once, in Delhi, but never elsewhere. We walked along the Garonne, the main river of Toulouse, the Capitole, and past the Arc-de-Triomphe equivalent of the city. It rained off and on and that was definitely a bummer because I totally didn't expect rain in any of the cities I planned to visit. A few hours later, Stéphane left me and I started to see the city on my own. I explored the southside of the Garonne. This part of Toulouse is a lot smaller and perhaps not as...fancy as the center city. I did find a used book market...unfortunately they were all in French. And then I realised that Toulouse does really have a lot of bookstores that are specialised and locally owned. It's a pleasant change from New York where bookstores are closing because of corporate giants like B&N. They had bookstores for just dance and music, history, literature - you name it! Anyway, it really started to pour in the afternoon and I got on the tram kinda randomly. I thought it would go to the city center, but it ended up going to the northern suburbs. After more wandering around, I got back to Stéphane's place and planned to shift to T's place. Incidentally, he only lived a few blocks away. But when I got there, no one answered the door or picked up the phone! Needless to say, I was pissed. I even tried calling him a few times. No success. So I killed some time in the internet café waiting for his call. Then at an Indian restaurant, Ganapathy, owned by a Tamil Sri Lankan. It felt so good to eat annam pappu again! And the waiter even recognised that I'm South Indian and brought out some achar! By the end of the meal, T still hadn't called, so I called up Stéphane and politely asked to stay at his place one more night. He was totally nice about it and let me, but it was still kinda awkward considering we said goodbye and all earlier in the evening. He told me that he wasn't staying at his place the following night, so I really had to find another host. Enter Javier. Javier offered to host me when I asked for an emergency couch but since Stéphane already offered, I politely declined. But I asked him after I got Stéphane's place and he was totally cool with it. So, the next morning, my mind cleared of couch worries, I left Stéphane's place super early (because he had to leave for work) and wandered around Toulouse. It didn't rain either! I found a small street with tons of great graffiti, walked by the St. Sernin Elgise, and had coffee at a crappy café. One of the things I really like about traveling is that I started reading...a lot. Because there's only so much walking and sightseeing and wandering you can do in a day before your feet give. So I made significant headway into Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Although I agree with most of his ideas, there were some faults with the presentation that I couldn't reconcile. After reading quite a bit, I met up with Javier at a metro station and he took me to his place to leave my stuff. Javier is from El Salvador and is doing a Masters in International Business in Toulouse. He is extremely very traveled and very laid back. When we got to his place, he made me arepas for lunch! I was so happy - I've always wanted to try some. After lunch, I headed back in the city and wandered around a bit more until Javier would be free in the evening. It was sunny for the rest of the day and I got to see a lot more of the city. During my wanderings, I saw two entreprising old Roma men making candle holders out of used soda and beer cans. It was brilliant! I bought three just to support them and later realised that I can give them to my next host as a gift. We tried talking, but the Roma men didn't seem to know much French or didn't understand me. But they did ask if I spoke Hindi or if I'm from Punjab. It was really cool interacting with them. I then remembered one of my goals for Europe: learning more and interacting with the Roma people. They are, after all, the oldest part of Indian diaspora and no matter what my advisor says, I still think diaspora studies are very interesting. I met up with Javier at his university and had a cheap lunch there. There I met his classmate whose name I simply cannot remember. She was an extremely sweet Chinese girl who did not want to speak French at all. We talked about Chinese people, Toulouse, summer work/internship plans and more. Javier then took me to the language café, a weekly meeting of people who want to practice different languages. I took this opportunity to practise my Spanish and see how good it is. To my disappointment, I could barely speak it. But the people at the table were very nice and understanding of this. My head started to hurt after about an hour of speaking Spanish, so Javier and I headed down to the weekly couchsurfing meeting at Café Flute. I met a lot of cool people there - including Laura, who was quite drunk by the time we got there. She was some zoologist or something at the university. But the really cool thing was (excluding the fact that she was a lot of fun) that she was wearing a Navdanya t-shirt! I was so so so excited and surprised to this. I asked if she met Vandana Shiva and more about her experience with the organisation. I honestly would apply for an internship with Navdanya for the summer if it was located in a Telugu speaking region of India. Anyway, after the meeting kinda dispersed, Javier and everyone went to a salsa bar across the street. I was such a pleasant change of scenary to finally see a lot of people of colour in France! All of us danced the night away and then Javier and I walked back to his place. And even though it was raining, I still had an excellent time just because Javier showed me a lot of fun things to do. The next morning, I woke up six minutes after my train to Nice had left.

Strasbourg...

The days before I left for my 'Whirlwind Tour of Western Europe,' I had quite a few papers to write which I put off to the last minute because of my terrible work ethic. Anyway, bottom line, I handed in the last assignment just hours before my bus left for the airport. But there it is: I have nothing to worry about school-wise until September (except for two tests in May). It feels weird. Three days on, I still have dreams about assignments due and deadlines and papers. C'est bizarre.

Like many of the other cities I've visited (and yet to write about), I visited Strasbourg purely on whim. I suppose my biggest reason was to see the 'marriage' of French and German cultures. I later learned that that's as wrong as saying Sikhism is like a blend of Hinduism and Islam (which they teach in American public schools). So I booked Ryanair to the Karlsruhe-Baden airport just across the border in Germany. There were no cheap flights to Strasbourg. I was also curious as to why they called the airport Baden-Baden (in their strong German accents) but didn't actually ask anyone. After an hour long bus ride, which was actually more expensive than the plane ticket, from the airport, I got to my host's place on Wednesday night. Vincent and his flatmate, François, are very nice and generous. Though they're very busy, they definitely try to help as many couchsurfers as possible. There was even another surfer here while I was here! And undoubtedly, the coolest thing about their flat is their some 60' flat screen TV. They connected a PC to it, so I'm currently typing on a really huge screen. Sometimes, I need to turn my head to read an entire webpage.

Strasbourg as a city is very nice. It's small, quaint and manageable - I suppose like most other European cities. There are a number of canals, tributaries and rivers that create a city of multiple islands. The centerpiece of the city, the Cathedrale; Notre Dame de Strasbourg, is vraiment magnifique! And I think the top platform of the city is actually the highest point in the city. After walking up some 200 steps on narrow spiral staircases, the view was really worth it. The Alsatian rooftops, the colourful buildings; and the German mountains out yonder were très jolis! After the Cathedrale, I walked to Germany. The bridge that crosses the Rhine River was this kind of weird curved and straight structure held up by suspension wires of sorts - not really sure how to describe it. Anyway, it felt awesome to finally sit on the Rhine - a river we studied about in European history countless times. And now, though I stopped over in Germany twice once when I was nine and once this past week, I can really say I've been to Germany because I've walked to it. Anyway, I headed back, tired after so much walking. And I should have been too, considering the three weeks before, I was simply on my bum writing or trying to write papers. On my way back, I passed a bakery with a weird looking cake in the window. I went in and asked what it was. Apparently it's Kougelhopf, a speciality of Alsace. So, I tried one and bought another for my hosts. But sans doubt, the highlight of that first day in Strasbourg was walking up at 2pm and moseying down over to a petit café and enjoying a crepe double fromage sur la terrace. It was really nice to kinda just sit there and observe the street life and the calm French culture. There were so many people on the street - it seemed as if no one was working!

The next day, Friday, I got up real early and rented a bike for a few hours. Because I already walked around Strasbourg so much, I decided to take the bike out to the country and see what the Alsatian paysage is like. I biked through a number of villages whose names I simply cannot pronounce. These include but are not limited to: Weyersheim, Gambsheim, La Wantzenau, and Hoerdt. I got to see a lot of typical Alsatian houses and some very large farms. Each village had a small main street and a very prominent mayor's office, a Mairie. And I didn't expect it, but just as in Spain and Italy, everything shuts down in the towns between the hours of twelve and two. All the while I was bicycling, I was drawing quite a few stares - not that I'm unused to that. But I couldn't decide, this time, if it was because I was, perhaps, the only brown (or even coloured) person in the area or because of my bright orange kurtha. What do you think?

After getting back to the city, I walked around to find a reasonably priced creperie. That's one goal I have for France: to eat crepes everyday. While I didn't find a creperie closeby to the bike shop, I did end up at a cafe. There, I ate a tarte flambée (sans bacon). I guess it's a kind of a flat very thin crusted dough with cream and onions (and other toppings if you so choose). Yay! I tried something else new. Then, I made another resolution: to try a new food/dish everyday. So far, it's been working out. Today, after my hosts' encouragement, I got the courage to buy munster cheese, which, apparently smells like feet (and it did when I first opened it!). I went to a cheese boutique, Le Cloche à Fromage, to get the Alsatian speciality. And with it, I bought a baguette as well! I felt so French! When I got home, Vincent cut the baguette like a true Frenchman and we had the cheese together. Be ye warned, munster should not be eaten alone - only the really French can handle it. After Vincent left for work (evening shift as a waiter) and François left for a family gathering, I melted the cheese on the baguette and it was simply marvelous!

Anyway, I highly recommend you visit Strasbourg and the Alsace area - there are a number of things I didn't mentioned like La Grande Horloge Astrologique, a clock bigger than my dorm room with moving people and an actual staircase, or the Alsatian museum that had two rooms for Jewish exhibits before even World War I. Staying with Vincent and François made the experience all the better - I really got to practice my French seeing as François was not particularly good at English.

Tomorrow morning, I'm taking a train to Paris to have lunch with a family friend and then heading down to Toulouse.

à bientot!